Robert Lee Zemeckis (born May 14, 1951) is an American
film director,
producer and
screenwriter. Zemeckis first came to public attention in the 1980s as the director of the comedic time-travel
Back to the Future film series, as well as the
Academy Award-winning
live-action/
animation epic
Who Framed Roger Rabbit(1988), though in the 1990s he diversified into more dramatic fare, including 1994's
Forrest Gump, for which he won an
Academy Award for Best Director.
His films are characterized by an interest in state-of-the-art
special effects, including the early use of
match moving in
Back to the Future Part II (1989) and the pioneering
performance capture techniques seen in
The Polar Express (2004),
Beowulf (2007) and
A Christmas Carol (2009). Though Zemeckis has often been pigeonholed as a director interested only in effects, his work has been defended by several critics, including
David Thomson, who wrote that "No other contemporary director has used special effects to more dramatic and narrative purpose."