David Yates

David Yates is an English BAFTA and Emmy award-winning film director. He has directed 16 films including his most recent, the film adaption of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.

Early Life
He was born in St Helens in 1963. Early influence on his work included Steven Spielberg's Jaws. His mother bought him a camera at aged 14.

Career
He has worked extensively in British television, mainly for the BBC, helming high-profile drama projects such as When I Was a Girl (1991), The Sins (2000), The Way We Live Now (2001), State of Play (2003), The Young Visiters (2003), Sex Traffic (2004) and Richard Curtis's The Girl in the Café'' (2005).

He received his highest-profile assignment to date when he was chosen to direct the fifth Harry Potter movie, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. Yates was the person that chose composer Nicholas Hooper to score the film. Yates is also directing the sixth film, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, which began filming in September 2007, and the final instalment, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, a 2 part film expected in 2010-11. Since Yates endeavors to make the films parallel the books as closely as possible, Warner Brothers agreed to split the final book into two films. He will also be directing The Giver, based on the book by Lois Lowry. It is to be released in 2011.

In 2006 he won an Emmy Award for Best Direction in a Made for Television Movie for The Girl in the Café.