Blake Edwards, in nearly forty films as a director and even more as a writer, has created a remarkably varied and accomplished body of work with its own singular vision. He is an honest, bracingly unsentimental observer of flawed, often unwitting people caught in a world that ranges from absurd to downright hostile. There is always a bit of artistic distance between Edwards and his characters" his movies have an elegance and sophistication that gives backbone and counterpoint to the mayhem that they depict. No writer or director in the past thirty years has created more hilarious sight gags and witty lines of dialogue than Blake Edwards. Yet what gives his movies such strong impact, from the drama of Days of Wine and Roses to the romance of Breakfast at Tiffany's to the downright hilarity of 10, is that at their core they deal truthfully with such key concerns as loneliness, the fear of aging, and the differences between men and women.

William Blake McEdwards was born in Tulsa, Oklahoma in 1922, the son of Jack McEdwards, one of Hollywood's top assistant directors, and the grand-son of J. Gordon Edwards, an important silent film director who made Cleopatra starring Theda Bara.

Raised on studio backlots, Edwards began his career as an actor, appearing in two dozen films before he became a writer and producer. He worked in radio, creating the series Richard Diamond: Private Detective, and in 1955, he directed his first film, Bring Your Smile Along. Edwards' sharp modern sensibility was evident in two innovative TV series he created in the late 1950s, Peter Gunn and Mr. Lucky, both with music by Henry Mancini.

Edwards entered Hollywood's top ranks between 1961 and 1963, when he directed Breakfast at Tiffany's, Days of Wine and Roses, and The Pink Panther. In addition to the enormously popular Pink Panther series, Edwards made a number of bold, fascinating films in the 1960s and 1970s, from The Party, an homage to silent comedy starring Peter Sellers, to his ambitious show business epic Darling Lili, his first Of six films starring his wife, Julie Andrews.

With the success of the Pink Panther movies, Edwards had the clout to make some persona projects, and between 1979 and 1981 he made three successive masterpieces: 10, still the most incisive comedy about a mid-life crisis; S.O.B., a brilliant and dark satire about the film industry; and Victor Victoria, the stylish gender-bendin' farce which Edwards recently staged as a Broadway musical.

In recent films such as That's Life, Blind Date, Skin Deep, and Switch, Edwards continues to do what he has done so well throughout his astonishing career: make beautifully constructed, deeply felt comedies that don't play down to the demographics of a mass audience, but address adult concerns with intelligence, wit, and honesty. And laughter.