In a career as celebrated as it is accomplished, Irwin Winkler commands a distinguished reputation in the motion picture industry as one of the most progressive and honored filmmakers. His films have received 12 Academy Awards from 45 nominations, including four Best Picture nominations -- a record that stands alone in contemporary Hollywood. Mr. Winkler received the Academy Award for Best Picture for his 1976 film Rocky, starring Sylvester Stallone. His other Best Picture nominations were for Raging Bull, The Right Stuff, and Goodfellas, while They Shoot Horses, Don't They? amassed nine Oscar nominations. Mr. Winkler is the only producer to have three of his films listed on the American Film Institute's list of "top 100 films" of all time.

Mr. Winkler most recently directed and co-produced the romantic drama At First Sight (1999), starring Val Kilmer, Oscar winner Mira Sorvino, Nathan Lane, Steven Weber, and Kelly McGillis. Based on a true story by Dr. Oliver Sacks (Awakenings), At First Sight is the moving account of Shirl Jennings's journey from blindness to sight.

Prior to this, Mr. Winkler directed and produced the suspense thriller The Net, starring Sandra Bullock. One of the big box office hits of 1995, the film was presented at both the Deauville and San Sebastian film festivals and has grossed to date in excess of $130 million worldwide. Mr. Winkler entered into a deal with USA Network to do a TV series based on this film which debuted in 1998.

Irwin Winkler made his directorial debut in 1989 with Guilty By Suspicion, a drama he also wrote about a blacklisted Hollywood director in the McCarthy-era Hollywood. The film. starring Robert DeNiro, Annette Bening, Patricia Wettig, and Martin Scorsese, had a profound impact in the United States and abroad and was called a "stirring and tragic evocation of terrible times" by The New York Times and was the official United States entry at the Cannes Film Festival.

Mr. Winkler's second feature as director, Night and the City, based on Jules Dassin's 1950's noir film which starred Richard Widmark, reunited Mr. Winkler with stars Robert DeNiro (for their seventh time together) and Jessica Lange (who was Oscar nominated for her role in Mr. Winkler's 1989 film Music Box). The critically acclaimed Night and the City was the closing night attraction at the prestigious New York Film Festival in 1992.

Mr. Winkler started his producing career in 1967 with the legendary director Norman Taurog (Skippy, Boys Town) at M-G-M with the film Double Trouble, starring Elvis Presley. Mr. Winkler and Robert Chartoff followed up their debut with the Lee Marvin thriller Point Blank -- a film which is now considered a cult classic and the one that introduced filmmaker John Boorman to the American film community. They then went on to produce the multi-nominated They Shoot Horses, Don't They? (for which Gig Young earned the Oscar as Best Supporting Actor), Leo the Last, and The Strawberry Statement. Each of these films was honored at the 1970 Cannes Film Festival: Leo won the Best Director prize for John Boorman, Strawberry received the Jury Award, and Horses garnered the closing night honors.

Mr. Winkler first met Martin Scorsese at the New York Film Festival showing of Mean Streets and their long relationship (five movies together) began with the New York, New York, an evocation of the musicals of the 1950s, starring Robert DeNiro and Liza Minnelli. Their next collaborative effort was Raging Bull, considered by many to be the classic American film of the 1980s and the one for which DeNiro garnered the Oscar for Best Actor. Goodfellas, their third project together with Scorsese as director, was named 1990's Best Film by the New York Film Critics Circle, the Los Angeles Film Critics Association, and the British Academy, as well as receiving numerous other honors.

Scorsese also acted in Mr. Winkler's homage to the jazz era, Round Midnight, for which Herbie Hancock won an Oscar for Best Score, and in Guilty By Suspicion, in which Scorsese gave a notable performance as a blacklisted director fashioned after Joseph Losey.

Other outstanding films produced by Irwin Winkler include The Gang That Couldn't Shoot Straight, Up the Sandbox, starring Barbra Streisand, The Gambler, starring James Caan, Comes a Horseman, starring James Caan and Jane Fonda, and True Confessions, starring Robert DeNiro and Robert Duvall.

A devotee of American literature, Mr. Winkler credits the works of Steinbeck, Dreiser and Dos Passos for influencing his higly personal preference for darker and often introspective and controversial stories. And his collaborations with the likes of Martin Scorsese, John Boorman, Bertrand Tavernier, Sydney Pollack, Costa-Gavras, Alan Pakula, and Philip Kaufman have indeed resulted in some of the rawest and most introspective portraits of the human experience to come out of Hollywood.

An unabashed risk-taker as well, Mr. Winkler has gone to extreme lengths to fund and film the projects he is deeply committed to. One such endeavor was Rocky, for which he and Chartoff mortgaged their own homes to provide the funding when no studio would. The against-all-odds triumph of the film more than made up for the daring way they took with their personal financial positions. For not only did Rocky earn the Academy Award for Best Picture in 1976, but the combined grosses for the series have amounted to over $1 billion.

Mr. Winkler has been the proud recipient of numerous American and international honors for his outstanding achievements. The French government personally honored him with their highest decoration for contribution to the arts -- the Commandeur des Arts et Lettres. In 1989, the British Film Institute saluted him with a retrospective of his work and the Chicago Film Festival bestowed upon him their Lifetime Achievement Award. Most recently, his alma mater, New York University, presented him with the school's Madden Memorial Award. In 1990, The Museum of Modern Art in New York hosted a retrospective of Mr. Winkler's films followed by the world premiere showing of Guilty By Suspicion. Mr. Winkler currently serves on the Board of Governors of the American Film Institute.

In the fall of 1992 Mr. Winkler was chosen by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art for a retrospective tribute saluting his career. LACMA ran 16 of his films culminating with the L.A. premiere of Night and the City. The last time the museum so honored a producer was their tribute to David O. Selznick i 1980.

At 1995's Deauville Festival he became the first producer to be honored with a retrospective of his films at the American Film Festival in Deauville. Ten of Mr. Winkler's films were showcased at the festival, which was attended by France's cultural minister, Philippe Douste-Blazy.