John Marcellus Huston was an American film director, screenwriter, actor, and visual artist. He travelled widely, settling at various times in France, Mexico, and Ireland. Huston was a citizen of the United States by birth but renounced U.S. citizenship to become an Irish citizen and resident in 1964. He later returned to the United States, where he lived the rest of his life. He wrote the screenplays for most of the 37 feature films he directed, many of which are today considered classics: The Maltese Falcon, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, The Asphalt Jungle, The African Queen, The Misfits, Fat City, The Man Who Would Be King and Prizzi's Honor.
In his early years, Huston studied and worked as a fine art painter in Paris. He then moved to Mexico and began writing, first plays and short stories, and later working in Los Angeles as a Hollywood screenwriter, and was nominated for several Academy Awards writing for films directed by William Dieterle and Howard Hawks, among others.