(born 1946) Controversial and powerful director, writer and producer whose movies since the mid-1980s have probed some of the most sensitive issues of contemporary American domestic and global politics. Stone’s work confronts history, often through profound male struggles with temptation and conspiracy, amid complex atmospheres charged with violence. His initial films, Salvador (1985) and the Oscar-Winning Platoon (1985), scored the moral dilemmas of involvement in Latin America and Vietnam, where Stone returned with the powerful transformations of Born on the Fourth of July (1989) and Heaven and Earth (1989). Equally controversial revisions of domestic issues emerged from the greed of Wall Street (1987), the shadowy powers of JFK (1991) and Nïxon (1995) and the violence of Natural Born Killers (1994)