Taylor Edwin Hackford (born December 31, 1945) is an American film director and former president of the Directors Guild of America. He won the Academy Award for Best Live Action Short Film for Teenage Father (1979). Hackford went on to direct a number of highly regarded feature films, most notably An Officer and a Gentleman (1982) and Ray (2004), the latter of which saw him nominated for the Academy Award for Best Director and Academy Award for Best Picture. Hackford was born in Santa Barbara, California, the son of Mary (née Taylor), a waitress, and Joseph Hackford. He graduated from the University of Southern California in 1968, where he was a pre-law major focusing on international relations and economics. After graduating, he served as a Peace Corps volunteer in Bolivia, where he started using Super 8 film in his spare time. He decided that he did not want to pursue a career in law, and instead got a mailroom position at KCET-TV. At KCET he was the associate producer on the Leon Russell special "Homewood" in 1970. In 1973 at KCET he produced the one-hour special Bukowski (about the poet Charles Bukowski), directed by Richard Davies.Hackford has been married three times. He married his first wife, Georgie Lowres, in 1967; they have one child, Rio Hackford, born in 1970. The couple divorced in 1972. In 1977 Hackford married Lynne Littman, with whom he has one child, Alexander Hackford, born in 1979; their marriage lasted until 1987. Hackford has been married to Academy Award-winning actress Helen Mirren since 1997. Hackford met Mirren when he was directing her in White Nights, although their first meeting did not go well: he kept her waiting to audition for White Nights, and she was icy. "It was a strange way to meet Helen, because she is a lovely person," says Hackford, "but she didn’t hold back her fury". Hackford and Mirren wed in 1997, although as a young woman Mirren had vowed never to marry.

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