John Carpenter, American director, producer, screenwriter, and composer was born on January 16, 1948.

John Howard Carpenter is an American filmmaker, actor and composer. Although Carpenter has worked with various film genres, he is associated most commonly with horror, action, and science fiction films of the 1970s and 1980s. Carpenter is generally recognized as one of the greatest masters of the horror genre. At the 2019 Cannes Film Festival, the French Directors' Guild presented Carpenter with the Golden Coach Award, lauding him as "a creative genius of raw, fantastic, and spectacular emotions."