John Woo, Hong Kong director, producer, and screenwriter
John Woo Yu-Sen SBS (Chinese: 吳宇森; born 1 May 1946) is a Hong Kong film director, producer and screenwriter. Woo is known for his highly chaotic action sequences, stylized imagery, Mexican standoffs, frequent use of slow motion and allusions to wuxia and Western cinema. He was also a pioneer of heroic bloodshed films (a crime action film genre involving Chinese triads) and the gun fu genre in Hong Kong action cinema, before working in Hollywood films.

Considered one of the major figures of Hong Kong cinema, Woo has directed several notable action films including A Better Tomorrow (1986), The Killer (1989), Hard Boiled (1992), and Red Cliff (2008/2009). He is a winner of the Hong Kong Film Awards for Best Director, Best Editing, and Best Picture, as well as a Golden Horse Award, an Asia Pacific Screen Award, and a Saturn Award.

Woo's Hollywood films include the action films Hard Target (1993) and Broken Arrow (1996), the action thriller Face/Off (1997) and the action spy film Mission: Impossible 2 (2000). He also created the comic series Seven Brothers, published by Virgin Comics. He cites his three favorite films as David Lean's Lawrence of Arabia, Akira Kurosawa's Seven Samurai and Jean-Pierre Melville's Le Samouraï. He is the founder and chairman of the production company Lion Rock Productions.