Julie Taymor

American film maker, the highly talented director of the musical play "The Lion King" for which she won a Tony Award, bringing her vision and ideas to the stage. Her debut film, "Titus," starring Anthony Hopkins in the title role, was given reviews in early 2000 that ranged from "compelling" to "uninvolving." The violent and grisly epic came from Shakespeare's blood-soaked "Titus Andronicus." She presents a daring mix of different eras in a brilliantly complex way with ancient Rome overlaid with today's telephone poles and video games. Known for magic realism in her stage productions, Taymor originally presented "King Stag" in 1984 and revived it in 1997. In 1998 she was awarded the Norton Prize for Sustained Excellence.

Taymor was 11 when she first became involved in theater, acting in a Boston Children's Theatre production of "Cinderella." During her teens, she acted in the Theater Workshop in Boston and them studied mime in Paris along with sculpture. Her studies continued at Oberlin College in Ohio, adding folklore and mythology, after which she spent four years in Indonesia on a fellowship.

Returning to New York in 1980, Taymor began designing for Joseph Papp's productions and went on to stage award-winning plays in New York and operas in Japan, Italy and Russia, collaborating with noted conductors. She was awarded a "genius grant" by the MacArthur Foundation in 1991. Her enormous success of "The Lion King" followed in 1997.