Who

Anderson is the filmmaker responsible for films like Boogie Nights and Magnolia.

Backstory

The son of voiceover star Ernie Anderson, who earned fame as the horror show host Ghoulardi, PT grew up in the capital of the porn world, the San Fernando Valley, which would later serve as inspiration for his film Boogie Nights. After graduating high school Anderson gave NYU film school a try, but ended up dropping out. In 1993 he shot his first film, a short called Cigarettes & Coffee. The film earned enough positive buzz at Sundance to allow him to make his first feature, 1996's Hard Eight, starring Gwyneth Paltrow, John C. Reilly and Philip Baker Hall, and he also started working on music videos right around the same time, directing for his then-girlfriend Fiona Apple. But the industry didn't recognize him as a force to be reckoned with until 1997, when he released the porn-industry epic Boogie Nights, loosely based on a short he'd made in high school called The Dirk Diggler Story. Nominated for three Oscars, the pic turned Anderson into one of the hottest young directors in Hollywood. He followed it up with the equally sprawling and ambitious Magnolia in 1999, then directed the quirky Adam Sandler dramedy Punch-Drunk Love in 2002.

Of note

Anderson's signature style of wide-ranging plots and ensemble casts has earned him comparisons to Robert Altman over the years (he served as a standby director on Altman's final film, A Prairie Home Companion) and he's known for relying on a core group of actors who generally favor indie work over mainstream Hollywood fare, including Philip Seymour Hoffman, John C. Reilly, Luiz Guzman, Philip Baker Hall, Julianne Moore, and William H. Macy. But he also has a knack for casting major stars in surprising roles. He cast Tom Cruise as a misogynistic motivational speaker in Magnolia, and turned Adam Sandler in a hapless weirdo in Punch-Drunk Love. Most recently, Anderson released There Will Be Blood, an adaptation of the Upton Sinclair novel Oil! starring Daniel Day-Lewis as a misanthropic '20s oil prospector, to a typically ecstatic critical reception.

Personal

Anderson is currently punch-drunk in love with Saturday Night Live's Maya Rudolph; the two have a daughter named Pearl Bailey Anderson, who was born in 2005. The couple was forced to move out of their $13,500-a-month Greene Street loft in 2006 because of bedbugs. They later sued to get back their rent, security deposit, broker's commission, along with $350,000 in damages.

True story

Aimee Mann's depressing song "Cigarettes and Red Vines" was written about Anderson.