One of the most distinctive members of the film industry — Canadian or otherwise — to emerge in the 1990s, director, writer, editor, and producer Atom Egoyan has left an indelible imprint on audiences everywhere with his haunting, beautifully wrought work.The son of Armenian refugees, Egoyan was born July 19, 1960, in Cairo, Egypt. His family moved to Victoria, British Columbia, in 1963, and Egoyan grew up consciously rejecting his own ethnicity in favor of assimilation into his adopted culture. During his teen years, he nurtured his interest in writing and reading plays, finding particular inspiration in the works of Samuel Beckett and Harold Pinter. It was also during his adolescence that Egoyan found unlikely inspiration for his future films by working as a hotel employee. He would later remark that preparing a hotel room and making a movie were similar in their creation of an illusion (an idea that would manifest itself most overtly in his 1989 film Speaking Parts, which takes place largely in a hotel). After enrolling as a student at the University of Toronto's Trinity College, Egoyan studied international relations with the idea of becoming a diplomat. In addition to his studies, he began to reconnect with the heritage that he had previously rejected, joining an Armenian student society. Egoyan made his first film as a freshman, a short that received financial backing from the Hart House Film Board. He went on to spend the remainder of his education doing film work, culminating in his senior year with Open House, a film that he wrote and directed with backing from the Ontario Arts Council. Following his graduation, Egoyan joined Toronto's Tarragon Theatre as a playwright. However, he soon discovered that his interests pointed him in the direction of film, and with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation's decision to broadcast Open House, he enjoyed his first taste of recognition. In 1984, he acted as editor, producer, screenwriter, and director for Next of Kin, a film concerning issues of identity and Armenian heritage. Funded by the Ontario Arts Council and the Canada Council, it was his first feature-length film. He proceeded to make Family Viewing in 1987, but it was 1989's Speaking Parts that garnered Egoyan his first dose of international recognition with a screening at the 1989 Cannes Film Festival's Director's Fortnight. Two years later, he made The Adjuster, a film which explored the dark sexual fantasies of an insurance adjustor (Elias Koteas) and his wife (played by Egoyan's real-life wife and muse Arsin