received well; his final film being the piteously unfunny ‘Funny Farm’ in 1988. He taught drama at Yale University for a while and died in December 2002.

2. Miloš Forman – 1975 – One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest

At No.2 is our only non-American. Well… up until 1975 when he gained US citizenship. Born Jan Tomáš Forman in February 1932 in Čáslav, Czechoslovakia, now the Czech Republic. His parents were arrested by the Nazis as participants in the underground resistance and his father died in Buchenwald and his mother died in Auschwitz.

In the mid-1950s, Forman studied at the Film Faculty of the Academy of Arts in Prague. Upon graduating he wrote two screenplays, the first of which, ‘Nechte to na Mně’ (Leave It to Me), was filmed by MartinFrič. Forman was an assistant director on the second of those, a situation comedy called ‘Štěňata’ (Cubs) directed by Ivo Novák.

He continued working in Czechoslovakia, particularly as part of the Czech New Wave, until coming to the USA in 1968 and starting his English language film work with ‘Taking Off’ in 1971. A couple of sport films later, technically a short and a section in a feature film, and he started on a film based on a play based on a Ken Kesey novel… ‘One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest’.

To say this turned out to be a success is a huge understatement. Winner of the ‘Big Five’; at that point only the second film to do so. It also won all six Golden Globes it was nominated for