Andrew Adamson (Photo courtesy of fantascienza.com)

Andrew Adamson is a film director from New Zealand. Born December 1, 1966, he moved to Papua New Guinea with his parents at age eleven, returning to New Zealand at age 18. He originally wanted to be an architect, but missed a university’s enrollment deadline due to a car accident. At age 24, he moved to San Francisco to work for Pacific Data Images in Los Angeles. He was the technical director for films such as “Toys” (1992) and “Angels in the Outfield” (1994), and he was the visual effects supervisor for “Batman Forever” (1995), “A Time to Kill,” (1996) and “Batman and Robin” (1997).

His first major success was the 2001 animated film “Shrek,” for which he wrote the story and directed. It went on to gross nearly $500 million worldwide and win the Oscar for Best Animated Feature Film. Its sequel, “Shrek 2,” grossed $900 million worldwide, making it one of the top ten highest-grossing films of all time.

It was then that the ironically named Adamson (“Son of Adam”) co-produced, co-wrote and directed “The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe” for Walden Media. The film opened in December 2005 and went on to gross $745 million dollars worldwide and win the Oscar for Best Achievement in Makeup. He returned to direct the second film in the franchise, “Prince Caspian,” which was released in May 2008, grossing $419 million dollars. However, he will serve only as executive producer in the forthcoming third film, “The Voyage of the Dawn Treader” (December 2010), which will be directed by Michael Apted.

Adamson now lives in New Zealand and has two daughters.