Though the director Danny Boyle has long been a cult favorite for films such as Trainspotting and 28 Days Later, it wasn’t until his 2008 indie film Slumdog Millionaire became a surprise blockbuster hit that he joined the ranks of megastar directors. Born in 1956 to a working-class Irish Catholic family in Lancashire, England, Boyle decided against the priesthood and turned instead to drama. He made his feature-film directorial debut with Shallow Grave, which became the the most commercially successful

British film of 1995. This and his adaptation of the Irvine Welsh novel Trainspotting were credited with revitalizing cinema in Britain.

In 2008 he directed Slumdog Millionaire, the story of an impoverished child on the streets of Mumbai who competes on India’s variant of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? The film won a directorial Oscar for Boyle and eight Academy Awards in total. Danny Boyle tells the story of this extremely talented director’s rise to fame, in his own words.