David Cronenberg

"I could conceive of a beauty contest for the inside of the human body where people would unzip themselves and show you the best spleen, the best heart, the best-looking viscera," David Cronenberg once remarked.

With exploding heads and mutating scientists being just a couple of the less cosy elements from his big screen back catalogue, the Canadian director is not the sort of bloke to make cosy comedies or run-of-the-mill dramas. In fact, he's been responsible for some of the most unsettling movies over the last 20 years, attracting a cult following around the world.

Directing was not his first vocation, however. Cronenberg studied Biochemistry at Toronto University but was at odds with the way it was taught, so he went on to study English Language and Literature instead.

At the time, he was already interested in film and had made two surreal short movies while still a student. Crimes of the Future, made in 1969 provided the first signs of what would become his trademarks: the relationship between the mind and the body and a fascination with physical decay and mutation.

Shivers, Rabid, The Brood, Scanners and Videodrome all went on to push back the boundaries of what was possible in the much-maligned horror genre.

In the last decade, his career has taken something of a rollercoaster ride through the highs of box office success (The Fly) to the lows of commercial failure (M Butterfly).

The former, a remake of the Vincent Price classic, made stars of both Jeff Goldblum and Geena Davis while thrusting the maverick director into the mainstream.

"In time, we all turn into monsters of one kind or another," he remarked at the time of its release. However, while fans revelled in the gory effects, many critics saw the film as a metaphor for Aids at a time when the true horror of the virus was hitting home. It touched a nerve around the world and made a lot of cash into the bargain.

Bizarrely, he was offered Top Gun to direct and a sequel to Aliens but passed on both for something far more personal.

Dead Ringers provided Jeremy Irons with two of his greatest roles as twin drug-addicted gynaecologists whose relationship is turned upside down when one of them falls in love with an actress with three cervixes. It was not the commercial hit its producers had hoped but remains one of the most original horror films of the last few years.

While many film-makers would opt for something a little more commercial to pay the rent and finance their pet projects, Toronto's most famous director opted for one of the most unfilmable novels in history.

Naked Lunch, the adaptation of William Burrough's book about a drug-addicted bug exterminator, remains one of the most unusual movies of the Nineties, perplexing both cast and crew. "I had to read the script six times," recalled actress Judy Davis. "It's bizarre, it's literary and extremely visual."

Which just about sums up all of David Cronenberg's work.

In recent years, Crash incurred the wrath of the moral majority, at least in Britain anyway where it was banned for a time. DC's 1999 movie, eXistenZ, found the film-maker back on top form with a fascinating tale of organic video games and a fatwah placed on one of the designers. The movie was inspired by a meeting with Salman Rushdie and features a fine cast including Jude Law, Jennifer Jason Leigh and Ian Holm.

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