Ken Burns, American Filmmaker

Busy Bee
Burns (pictured in his Walpole, New Hampshire office, above) not only directs his films, he also often serves as the writer, cinematographer, editor, music director and producer. As a young man, he especially liked the westerns of John Ford for the way they showed, in Burns' words, "a social history that involved people from the bottom up, ordinary people in social situations," and he has let this style inform his own work.