An American film director and screenwriter. He became known in the late 1980s and the early 1990s for directing a series of films about the Vietnam War, in which he had participated as an American infantry soldier. His work frequently focusses on contemporary political and cultural issues, often controversially. He has received three Academy Awards: Best Adapted Screenplay for Midnight Express (1978), and Best Director for Platoon (1986) and Born on the Fourth of July (1989). His movies often use many different cameras and film formats, including VHS, 8mm film and 70 mm film, sometimes using several formats in a single scene, as in Natural Born Killers (1994) and JFK (1991).