Rob Marshall

Director & actor · born 17 October 1960 · Madison, Wisconsin, USA

Rob Marshall (born October 17, 1960) is an American theater director, film director and choreographer. He is a six-time Tony Award nominee, Academy Award nominee, Golden Globe nominee and four-time Emmy winner whose most noted work is the 2002 Academy Award Best Picture winner Chicago.

Marshall was born in Madison, Wisconsin and raised in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He debuted in the film industry with the Emmy Award-wining TV adaptation of the musical Annie by Charles Strouse and Martin Charnin. After that he went on to direct the much anticipated adaptation of the Kander and Ebb musical Chicago in 2002 for which he was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Director. His next feature film was the drama Memoirs of a Geisha based on the best-selling book of the same name by Arthur Golden starring Zhang Ziyi, Gong Li, Michelle Yeoh and Ken Watanabe. The film went on to win three Academy Awards and gross $162,242,962 at the worldwide box office. In 2009, Marshall directed Nine, an adaptation of the hit Broadway production with the same name starring Daniel Day-Lewis, Marion Cotillard, Nicole Kidman, Sophia Loren and Penélope Cruz, who was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. Marshall then went on to direct Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides, the fourth chapter of Disney's Pirates of the Caribbean film series starring Johnny Depp, Ian McShane, Penélope Cruz and Geoffrey Rush, which is set to open on May 20, 2011.

Where to start: Memoirs of a Geisha (2005).