The Winner: Ang Lee
Taiwan-born Ang Lee director has moved gracefully from martial arts epic to romance in Regency England. Now, he has directed the mournful and moving "Brokeback Mountain," about a lifelong passion between two American cowboys.
Born Oct. 23, 1954, Lee graduated from arts college in Taiwan before coming to the United States to earn a bachelor degree in theater direction from the University of Illinois. He then earned a master's degree from New York University's Tisch School of the Arts. His class projects in 1983 included serving as assistant director on fellow student Spike Lee's "Joe's Bed-Stuy Barbershop: We Cut Heads."
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In his early career, Lee stuck to his hometown roots and put Taiwan on movie fans' map with two critically acclaimed movies: "The Wedding Banquet" in 1993 and "Eat Drink Man Woman" in 1994. Both movies were deeply rooted in Chinese culture, but were hits with international audiences.
Still, Lee was a surprise choice to direct the 1995 film adaptation of "Sense and Sensibility," Jane Austen's novel about love among the rural English gentry.
The movie was nominated for an Academy Award as best picture. (Emma Thompson, the film's star and screenwriter, won in the category of best adapted screenplay.) Lee won directing awards that year from the National Board of Review and the New York Film Critics Circle.
In 2000, Lee made "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon." This epic tale of martial arts masters in love became the highest grossing foreign-language film ever released in the U.S. It won the Oscar for best foreign language film as well as a Golden Globe for best director. "It's a good exam — how to tell a story with a global sense," he noted in a 2000 interview with the London newspaper "The Guardian."
Lee and his wife, Jane Lin, have two sons.