English filmmaker Alfred Hitchcock was BOTD in 1899. Born in London to a working-class family, his father died when he was 15, and he left school to work and support his family, eventually working as a copywriter for The Henley Telegraph. Excused from military service during World War One, he joined the London branch of Paramount Pictures as a title card designer for silent films. He graduated to assistant directing for Gainsborough Pictures, where he met his future wife, film editor Alma Reville. He rose to prominence directing a series of successful thrillers, including The Lodger starring Ivor Novello, The 39 Steps and The Lady Vanishes, demonstrating his mastery of psychological suspense. Lured to Hollywood in 1939, he directed a hugely popular adaptation of Daphne du Maurier’s novel Rebecca, winning the Oscar for Best Picture. Hitchcock’s films showcased his fascination with sexual obsession and murderous desire, notably in Suspicion and Notorious, the first of many collaborations with Cary Grant. He also created some of the most memorable queer-coded characters of classic Hollywood, including Mrs Danvers in Rebecca; the murderous gay couple in Rope (played by gay actors John Dall and Farley Granger, based on real-life killers Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb); the mother-loving psychopath of Strangers on a Train, based on another Du Maurier novel; and the bitchy gay killers of North by Northwest, wittily played by James Mason and Martin Landau. His straight characters were equally as demented, notably the obsessive voyeurs played by Jimmy Stewart in Rear Window and Vertigo. Hitchcock had complicated and predatory relationships with many of his leading ladies, most notably Tippi Hedren, whom he subjected to weeks of physical and psychological abuse during the making of avian horror film The Birds. His other frequent star Grace Kelly fared somewhat better, resisting his advances during the making of Dial M for Murder, Rear Window and To Catch a Thief. Hitchcock juggled his film schedule with the hugely popular TV anthology drama series Alfred Hitchcock Presents and the Alfred Hitchcock Hour, introducing each episode with tongue-in-cheek commentaries. He reunited with Grant in 1959 for the thriller North by Northwest, which became one of his greatest box-office successes, before electrifying audiences in 1960 with Psycho, a sordid Freudian horror film starring Anthony Perkins as a mother-obsessed cross-dressing serial killer. His box office appeal began to wane in the 1960s, and his 1972 film Frenzy was roundly criticised for its (for the time) graphic depictions of rape and strangulation. He made his final film, Family Plot, in 1977, spending his remaining years amusedly collecting knighthoods and lifetime achievement awards. While commercially successful, his artistry as a filmmaker was largely overlooked until he was embraced by French New Wave director François Truffaut, whose interviews with Hitchcock were published in the influential 1966 book Hitchcock/Truffaut. Hitchcock and Reville remained together for over 50 years, having a daughter together, and collaborating frequently on film scripts. He once joked that he would have become “a poof” had he not met Alma, and his work arguably became an outlet for his voyeurism and sadism. He died in 1980 aged 80. Now considered one of the most influential filmmakers of all time, his work has been endlessly imitated, while his films (especially Vertigo) regularly feature in lists of the best films ever made. The psychosexual and queer codings of Hitchcock’s work have been extensively analysed by queer film scholars, notably the critic Camille Paglia.