Oliver Stone

Filmmaker

Oliver Stone is a successful screenwriter, producer and film director whose work during the 1980s and '90s was consistently controversial. Stone, a veteran of the Vietnam War, began as a screenwriter in the late 1970s, with credits that included Midnight Express (1978), Conan the Barbarian (1982, the movie that made Arnold Schwarzenegger a star) and Scarface (1983, with Al Pacino). He won an Oscar as best director for his semi-autobiographical film about the ground war in Vietnam, Platoon (1986, starring Willem Dafoe), and within a decade had made a string of successful and controversial films. His more controversial films include JFK (1991) and Nixon (1995), historical dramas about Presidents John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon (1995), which earned Stone a reputation as a historical revisionist and paranoid conspiracy theorist. His 1994 movie Natural Born Killers came under fire for its graphic violence, again making Stone a lightning rod for harsh criticism. His movies U-Turn (1997) and Any Given Sunday (1999), though of a distinctly different flavor, did little to diminish his reputation for controversy.

Extra credit: Stone won another Best Director Oscar for Born on the Fourth of July (1989, starring Tom Cruise)... An infantry specialist in Vietnam, Stone was decorated with a Purple Heart and the Bronze Star.