Jan Tomáš Forman (born February 18, 1932), better known as Miloš Forman, is a film director, actor and script writer.

Forman was born in Čáslav, Czechoslovakia. He was orphaned at a very young age when his parents died at the concentration camp in Auschwitz for their membership in a Czech Resistance group. After the war, Miloš attended King George College public school in the spa town Poděbrady , where his fellow students were Václav Havel and the Mašín brothers. Later on he studied film direction at the School of Cinema in Prague. He directed several Czech comedies in Czechoslovakia. However, in 1968 when the USSR and its Warsaw Pact invaded the country to end the Prague Spring, he was in Paris negotiating for the production of his first American film. The Czech studio that he worked for fired him, claiming that he was out of the country illegally. He moved to New York.

In spite of initial difficulties he started directing in his new home country, achieving his first success with the adaptation of Ken Kesey's novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest in 1975, which won five Academy Awards including one for direction. In 1977, he became a naturalized citizen of the United States. Another notable success was Amadeus, which won eight Academy Awards. Later movies didn't enjoy much of success.

Forman's early movies are still very popular among Czechs. Many situations and phrases made it into common use: for example the Czech term zhasnout (to switch lights off) from The Firemen's Ball , associated with petty theft in the movie got used as one of synonyms for real large-scale asset stripping happening in the country during the 1990s.

Notable works

• Black Peter (1963)
• Audition (1963)
• The Loves of a Blond (1966)
• The Firemen's Ball (1968)
• Taking Off (1971)
• One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975)
• Hair - musical (1979)
• Amadeus (1984)
• The People vs. Larry Flynt (1996)
• Man On The Moon (1999)

External link

• Miloš Forman, BBC News of March 2001