Thanks to the content of his films, American director James Ivory has spent much of his long career being mistaken for an Englishman. Few filmmakers have been more closely associated with a particular type of genre than Ivory and his longtime collaborator, producer Ismail Merchant. The very mention of the hyphenate Merchant-Ivory effortlessly conjures up heavily stylized images of Edwardian England, replete with stiff upper lips, effete aristocrats, and young women confined by both corsets and repressed desire. However, although much of Ivory's reputation has been built on his E.M. Forster-adapted period dramas, he has also earned considerable respect for the insightful examinations on the interplay of different cultures inherent in almost all of his work — particularly his earlier films about India — and his and Merchant's ability to make quality films on a minimal budget.

Born in Berkeley, California, on June 7, 1928, Ivory grew up in Klamath Falls, Oregon, where his father ran a sawmill. Having decided at the age of 14 that he wanted to go into film as an art director, he attended the University of Oregon, where he majored in fine arts. Following graduation, Ivory traveled to Tours, France, to study the language, but he soon lost interest in his studies. He relocated to the University of Southern California, where he entered the film department. It didn't take Ivory long to realize that he hated film school, so he took a leave of absence to travel to Venice, where he worked on his masters thesis, Venice: Themes and Variations. However, his work was interrupted by the Korean War, for which he did two years service in Germany; his time there was mainly spent putting on Soldier Shows, which, as he would later remark, gave him his introduction to show business.…  » Read more