Ang Lee

Guide Note: Director Ang Lee started his career with the Chinese-language art house hits The Wedding Banquet and Eat Drink Man Woman. He has since helmed a variety of well-received, award-winning features in English, including the 2005 romantic drama Brokeback Mountain, for which he won an Oscar for Best Director.

Fast Facts:

1. Left Taiwan in 1978 to study in the US
2. Assistant director on one of Spike Lee's student films
3. Turned downed opportunity to direct Terminator 3
4. Often collaborates with writer/producer James Schamus
5. One of only two directors in history to win two Golden Lion awards at the Venice Film Festival

Taiwan Films

After receiving his MFA from the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University, Lee failed to find work in the American film industry, and received funding for his 1992 debut Pushing Hands, from his native Taiwan. The film was a success in Asia, and allowed Lee to turn another original script into a film, The Wedding Banquet in 1993. The film won the Berlin Film Festival and was nominated for an Oscar for Best Foreign Film.

Lee returned to Taiwan to direct his third film, Eat Drink Man Woman, which was remade years later in America as Tortilla Soup. It was Lee's last film in Chinese until the year 2000, when he directed the critically-heralded martial arts epic Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon featuring Chinese stars Zhang Ziyi, Michelle Yeoh and Chow-Yun Fat.

In 2007, Lee released the Chinese-language historical thriller Lust Caution. The sexually-explicit, NC-17 movie was a hit in Asia, and won Lee his second Golden Lion award at the Venice Film Festival, but went relatively unnoticed in the U.S.

Hollywood Films

In 1995, Lee directed his first film in English, an adaptation of Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility starring and co-written by Emma Thompson. After a few rare misfires, including the western Ride With the Devil and the comic book movie Hulk, Lee took on the somewhat controversial Western romance Brokeback Mountain, about two cowboys who are unsettled to discover a mutual attraction.

Mountain won 3 Oscars, including Lee's first Academy Award for Best Director. The expected winner of that night's Best Picture award, it lost out to Paul Haggis' race drama Crash.