Billy Wilder

Born 22 June 1906 in Sucha, in the Galicia region of Austria-Hungary, Wilder fled Europe and became a naturalised American citizen in 1939 — the same year he co-wrote Ninotchka for Ernst Lubitsch, the director he spent the rest of his life calling his teacher. Over the next three decades he made Double Indemnity, Sunset Boulevard, Some Like It Hot and The Apartment, and became Hollywood’s most quotable craftsman: a writer-director whose advice about writing was as sharp as his dialogue. He died on 27 March 2002.