Peter Bogdanovich (Serbian Cyrillic: Петар Богдановић, Serbian Latin: Petar Bogdanović) (born July 30, 1939) is an American film historian, director, writer, actor and critic. He was part of the wave of "New Hollywood" directors (which included William Friedkin, Brian DePalma, George Lucas, Martin Scorsese, Steven Spielberg, Michael Cimino and Francis Ford Coppola, among others), and was particularly relevant during the 1970s with his film The Last Picture Show.

Early life

The son of immigrants fleeing the Nazis -- his father is a Serbian painter and pianist and his mother descended from a rich Austrian Jewish family -- Bogdanovich was conceived in Europe but born in America. He was originally an actor in the 1950s, studying his craft with acting teacher Stella Adler (he was only 16 but had to lie about his age and say he was 18 to qualify), and appearing on television and in summer stock. In the early 1960s, Bogdanovich became known for programming movies at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. An obsessive cinema-goer, sometimes seeing up to 400 movies a year in his youth, Bogdanovich prominently showcased the work of American directors such as John Ford, whom he subsequently wrote a book about based on the notes he had produced for the MoMA retrospective of the director, and the then-underappreciated Howard Hawks. Bogdanovich also brought attention to such forgotten pioneers of American cinema as Allan Dwan.