Andrew Davis Biography

Andrew Davis (born November 21, 1947) is an American film director, producer and cinematographer, noted for the action films Code of Silence, The Fugitive, Chain Reaction, Collateral Damage and Under Siege.

Born on the south side of Chicago, Illinois, Davis has directed several films using Chicago as a backdrop. He is the son of actor Nathan Davis and Metta Davis and the brother of Richard Davis and Jo Ellen Friedman.

After attending Harand Camp of the Theater Arts and Bowen High School, Davis went on to study journalism at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign before enlisting in the Air Force as a linguist and separating at the rank of Senior Airman. It was not long before his interest in civil rights and anti-war issues converged with his growing interest in film-making. Davis was mentored by acclaimed cinematographer Haskell Wexler with whom he worked on Medium Cool and began his film career as a cameraman on blaxploitation films like The Hit Man, Cool Breeze and The Slams in the 1970s.

His first feature film as a director was the semi-biographical story, Stony Island. Davis has gone on to direct such films as The Fugitive, Under Siege, Above the Law, Code of Silence, Holes, The Package and The Guardian.

Andrew also directed the cutscenes for the videogame Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory.

In October 2006, he told a London press conference that he's intending to make a film from a fusion of two novels: Miguel de Cervantes's Don Quixote and Henry Fielding's Tom Jones.