Writer/ Director Andrew Litvack was born in New York City in 1964. After graduating from Williams College in 1987, he moved to Paris and has lived there ever since. In Paris, Litvack made a living by subtitling hundreds of French films into English, including many by Jean-Luc Godard, Andre Techin, and Youssef Chahine.

In 1992 he worked as an assistant to Youssef Chahine on a play he directed at the Comedie Francaise (Caligula by Camus), and subsequently met Ismail Merchant and James Ivory through Humbert Balsan, Chahine's producer and longtime Merchant Ivory collaborator.

This meeting led to work with James Ivory on the Merchant Ivory films Jefferson in Paris and A Soldier's Daughter Never Cries, and with Ismail Merchant on The Proprietor.

Two-time Oscar winner Dianne Wiest  is also an Emmy, Golden Globe, and Screen Actors Guild Award winner.  Born in Kansas City, Missouri, Dianne Wiest began her career as a member of the American Shakespeare Company. She went on to earn the Obie, Clarence Derwent and Theatre World Awards for Best Actress for her performance in “The Art of Dining” in 1983. She made her stage directorial debut with “Not About Heroes” at the Williamstown (Massachusetts) Playhouse in 1985.

Wiest made her first television appearance in a PBS Great Performances presentation of Elie Wiesel’s “Zalmen, or the Madness of God.” Other notable television appearances include: a guest appearance on the series “Road to Avonlea,” for which she received an Emmy for Outstanding Guest Actress in a Drama; the recent movie, “The Simple Life of Noah Dearborn,” starring opposite Sidney Poitier; and the miniseries “The 10th Kingdom.”  Wiest recently portrayed district attorney Nora Lewin on NBC's "Law and Order."

Wiest has performed in five of director Woody Allen’s films, winning Best Supporting Actress Oscars for “Hannah and Her Sisters” and “Bullets Over Broadway”; her other Allen films include “The Purple Rose of Cairo,” “September” and “Radio Days.” She has also appeared in many other memorable features, including “Footloose,” “Independence Day,” Joel Schumacher’s “The Lost Boys,” “Bright Lights, Big City,” Ron Howard’s “Parenthood,” Susan Seidelman’s “Cookie,” Tim Burton’s “Edward Scissorhands,” Jodie Foster’s “Little Man Tate,” Mike Nichols’ “The Birdcage,” and Robert Redford’s “The Horse Whisperer.” Wiest was featured in “I Am Sam,” opposite Sean Penn and Michelle Pfeiffer.

The second child of Major David Birkin and actress/singer Judy Campbell, Jane was born in London on December 14th, 1946. With a happy family, a childhood spent in the countryside, vacations to the Isle of Wight and boarding school classes, Jane was tame and well-behaved until the sixties revolution...

As a teenager, a miniskirted Chelsea girl, Jane embraced the pop excitement of  "Swinging London."  Following in her mother's footsteps, she started auditioning. Noticed by Binky Beaumont, she made her acting debut at seventeen at the Haymarket Theater playing a young deaf-mute in Carving a Statue by Graham Greene.

But it was in a musical, Passion Flower Hotel, at the Prince of Wales Theater, that she made her singing debut. She auditioned for the part encouraged by composer John Barry, author of the James Bond 007 theme and whom she ended up marrying at nineteen. After a first movie experience in Richard Lester's The Knack, she was hired by Antonioni who was shooting Blow Up, which later received the Palme d'Or Award at the Cannes international film festival. This movie also created her first controversy in a brief scene, where she appeared naked, which quickly became  the talk of London.

After the failure of her marriage and the birth of her daughter Kate in 1967, she decided to move to France. Recruited by French filmmaker Pierre Grimblat to star in his movie Slogan, she fell in love with her costar Serge Gainsbourg, a popular singer and musician.  A fashionable couple on the Paris scene, they made the headlines in 1969 with an artfully disturbing song, Je t'aime moi non plus. Offensive to some people, a delight to others, Jane's sensuous lovemaking sighs became a hit around the world.

A fragile, thin voice always on the verge of breaking remained her lasting trademark and was cleverly used by Gainsbourg who adapted his songwriting to Jane's timbre.  In 1971, they had a daughter, Charlotte, who is now an actress.  During this happy period, Jane played in some thirty movies. At the same time, she went on with her singing career, recording four albums which built her image as a sometimes sexy sometimes wistful Lolita, best showcased in her 1978 hit LP Ex-fan des sixties.

Ismail on the set of Cotton Mary (1997)

Born in Bombay, Ismail Merchant has lived and worked for most of his life in the West, completing his education at New York University where he earned his Masters Degree in Business Administration.

Merchant’s first film was a theatrical short, The Creation of Woman, which was nominated in 1961 for an Academy Award and was an official entry from the United States in the Cannes Film Festival that same year. While en route to the Festival, Merchant met James Ivory, who agreed to form a partnership, Merchant Ivory Productions, to make English-language theatrical features in India for the international market.

It was not only the visual beauty and charm of India that attracted Merchant to begin making his films in India, but also the opportunity to finance his films with funds from frozen Rupee accounts of major American distributors. These accounts contained distribution proceeds that the Indian government would not allow to be repatriated, but which could be utilized under an agreement to make films in India. The Householder was Merchant and Ivory’s first feature length film and the first Indian film to be distributed worldwide by a major American company, Columbia Pictures. It was followed by more Indian features, all in some way funded wholly or in part by an American studio, including Shakesspeare Wallah (1965), The Guru (1969), and Bombay Talkie (1970).

Merchant’s third feature film as Director, Cotton Mary, was set in Kerala, India and starring Madhur Jaffrey, Greta Scacchi, and James Wilby. The film tells the tale of an Anglo-Indian nurse in search of her identity in Post-Colonial India, and has been described as the finest example of Merchant’s ability to combine the best of East and West in modern cinema. The Mystic Masseur, based on the novel by V.S. Naipaul, is Merchant’s latest work as Director was released in the spring of 2002 and was described by the New York Times as "a subtle, humorous, illuminating study of politics, power and social mobility."

The American release of The Golden Bowl in April of 2001, starring Nick Nolte, Uma Thurman and Anjelica Huston, marked the Fortieth Anniversary of Merchant’s career in film production, a career that has already earned the Merchant Ivory team a place in The Guinness Book of World Records for the longest partnership in independent cinema. For over thirty years, Merchant Ivory Productions has endured as one of the most productive collaborations in cinema, bringing forth such films as The Europeans, Quartet, Heat and Dust, A Room With a View, Mr. and Mrs. Bridge, Howards End, The Remains of the Day, Jefferson in Paris, and Surviving Picasso.

Merchant is also a renowned chef and author of a number of books on cuisine, including Ismail Merchant’s Indian Cuisine; Ismail Merchant’s Florence; Ismail Merchant’s Passionate Meals and Ismail Merchant’s Paris: Filming and Feasting in France.