On a crisp spring day, on a picturesque country estate in Hertfordshire, southern England, a young journalist has somehow made his way past the high stone wall covered in "no trespassing" signs and through the barred iron gates. He confidently knocks on the front door, and an unkempt man with a straggly, dark beard and thick-rimmed glasses answers, smiling pleasantly at the young caller.

"Excuse me, may I please speak to Stanley Kubrick? " the visitor asks. "I'm a newspaper journalist... " But the older man interrupts, shaking his head apologetically.

"I'm so sorry, " he replies. "Mr Kubrick isn't at home today. "

Disappointed, the reporter walks away. And Stanley Kubrick - legendary film director, maverick, recluse - closes his door.
One of the most controversial, influential and authoritarian directors of modern cinema, Kubrick guarded his privacy so fiercely that even those who sought him out didn't know what he looked like. The relentless press in the UK, where US-born Kubrick made his home from the 1960s, published wild stories about him, frustrated by the lack of solid news or gossip. One of the most fanciful tales was that he shot a trespassing fan... then fired at him again for bleeding on the lawn. It was as if Kubrick had become a character from one of his often dark films, and his work was cloaked in as much secrecy as his life.

Rarely leaving the house he shared with third wife Christiane, an artist who occasionally worked with him on his films, and daughters Katharina, Vivian and Anya, Kubrick had a studio at home (to stop leaks from open sets), kept actors guessing about their own scripts, and even refused to give vital information to his financiers.

Warner Bros. Studios, which stayed faithful to Kubrick, never complained: his films were box-office gold. Loved or loathed, Kubrick's deeply pessimistic, sometimes frightening but always telling tales of past, present and future still live on as some of the most groundbreaking cinema ever made.

Stanley Kubrick was born in 1928 in the Bronx, New York, to Jack and Gertrude Kubrick. He was encouraged to follow in his father's footsteps and become a doctor, but despite showing great intelligence, the young man was a poor student. His father wanted to stimulate his son's promising brain, so Jack introduced young Stanley to chess, then gave him a camera. Both gifts sparked lifelong passions.

Kubrick became immediately obsessed with photography and wandered around New York, taking pictures he would later develop in a friend's darkroom. He was clearly talented and, at 17, won an apprenticeship as a photographer at Look, a biweekly general interest magazine that covered everything from movie stars and sports to politics. His career behind the lens had begun.

Kubrick's first foray into movies was in 1950, two years after he married Toba Metz, a high school sweetheart. Borrowing from family and friends, the fledgling filmmaker put together Day Of The Fight, a documentary about a boxer. Although it made him little money, the film spurred RKO Studios to fund his next project. Finally, in 1953, after several well-received documentaries, Kubrick made his first (albeit small-scale) feature film, Fear And Desire. He later recalled his impressions of this bold career leap: "I was aware that I didn't know anything about making films, but I believed I couldn't make them any worse than the majority of films I was seeing. Bad films gave me the courage to try making a movie. "

However, his rising fame brought with it personal turmoil when Kubrick met ballet dancer Ruth Sobotka during production of Fear And Desire. A year later, he divorced Metz and married Sobotka.

Fear And Desire was much lauded, and Kubrick's reputation as a director to watch was sealed. He quickly followed up with Killer's Kiss in 1955, which starred his second wife, and The Killing in 1956. But once again, his professional success took its toll on his love life, and his marriage to Sobotka ended after only three years, partly due to Kubrick devoting so much of his time to work.

Three years later, he hit the big time when Kirk Douglas, with whom he'd worked on his 1957 war movie, Paths Of Glory, requested Kubrick as director on the 1960 big-budget epic Spartacus (Douglas was executive producer). Although he was relatively inexperienced, Kubrick began imposing his ideas and style on set straightaway. In fact, he was so didactic that complaints about his overbearing need for total control - a tendency that would continue throughout his career - abounded. At one stage, cinematographer Russell Metty lamented that Kubrick was taking over his job, after the 32-year-old director told him to "sit and do nothing". Ironically, Metty later accepted an Academy Award for the film's cinematography.

Although Spartacus cleaned up at the Oscars, the film is not regarded as Kubrick's finest work. After being fired as director (and replaced with lead actor Marlon Brando) from 1961's One-Eyed Jacks, Kubrick forsook Hollywood and took his third wife, Christiane Harlan, an actress he'd met on Paths Of Glory, to England. There, he went on to make the unique movies for which he is best known.

His first major successes came with the 1962 film version of Vladimir Nabokov's novel Lolita and the 1964 black comedy Dr. Strangelove, starring Peter Sellers. With his financial and artistic freedom on future projects secured, Kubrick completed sci-fi classic 2001: A Space Odyssey in 1968. The film received mixed reviews but nevertheless became an instant cult hit, and is now generally acknowledged as his finest achievement.

Kubrick's next - and most controversial - movie was 1971's A Clockwork Orange. Based on the Anthony Burgess novel about Alex de Large and his teenage gang of "ultra-violent droogs", the film commented on what Kubrick termed "the question of free will". Lead thug Alex, played by Malcolm McDowell, is used as a government guinea pig, exposed to some serious aversion therapy and then released back into society when considered "cured", with horrifying results.

After the media linked brutal crimes in the UK to the movie, Kubrick and his family received death threats, accusing him of glamorising violence. Devastated that his film had been so misconstrued, the director withdrew it from British cinemas in 1973, and the ban continued until his death 26 years later. Kubrick himself retreated further behind the towering walls of his countryside property.

The secrecy surrounding his private life only fuelled the rumours about him that crept from his film sets. Actors were forced to work long hours without breaks, doing hundreds of takes for simple scenes, and even Hollywood heavyweights like Jack Nicholson - who starred in Kubrick's adaptation of Stephen King's novel The Shining, in 1980 - were no exception. Already a big star, Nicholson once said he stopped reading the script because so many changes were made, and didn't see the final cut of the film until the critics did. Kubrick, well known for pushing his actors to their limits, forced Shelley Duvall, who played Nicholson's terrorised wife in the film, to shoot one scene 127 times. But he was highly protective of six-year-old Danny Lloyd, who played the couple's son, ensuring that the boy never realised he was acting in a horror film until some years later.

Kubrick's next project was 1987's Vietnam movie Full Metal Jacket. Once again, he got the most out of his cast members by forcing them into difficult situations - banning speaking on set between "sergeants" and "trainees", even when out of character. However, despite his strict and often obsessive approach to work, Kubrick developed strong relationships with many of his actors, often over a game of chess between takes. Malcolm McDowell reveals, "He had his very odd moments. I remember once walking into his office and he had his headphones on and seemed lost in what he was listening to. Eventually, he noticed me. 'Malc, I was listening to the air traffic control at Heathrow, and you know what? There was just a near miss. '"

This wasn't simply an eccentricity - in fact, Kubrick, a qualified pilot, had developed a chronic fear of flying. He was so afraid that he filmed all of Full Metal Jacket in the UK.

"He was obsessed with safety, " says McDowell. "He would get in a New York taxi cab and the first thing he'd say is, 'Go slow, my back is out. ' He made up this back condition as insurance. "

Out of the public eye, Kubrick's personal life, like his films, often bordered on the bizarre. The lengths to which he went to protect his anonymity were so successful that, in the early '90s, English travel agent Alan Conway convinced numerous people, including New York Times theatre critic Frank Rich, that he was the elusive auteur. Dining at the exclusive Groucho Club, promising parts in films to actors he met with, Conway was careful never to sign a cheque or pay a bill. He was eventually exposed by the media. Apparently, Kubrick was fascinated by the tale.

When he wasn't in production, the director spent his time holed up at home, researching his next project, with wife Christiane keeping him company. Born in Nazi Germany, she was an artist as well as an actress, and created the paintings that appeared in A Clockwork Orange and 1999's epic Eyes Wide Shut. Devoted to her husband, she once remarked, "Stanley would be happy with just eight tape recorders and one pair of pants. "

Constantly researching new scripts, Kubrick had said, in 1972, that he'd like to adapt the Arthur Schnitzler novel Traumnovelle. In 1997, 10 years after the release of his most recent movie, he began shooting. That film was Eyes Wide Shut, and it would be his last.

Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman, then Hollywood's golden couple, starred in it and devoted themselves to the master of movies for what proved to be one of the longest ever film shoots, lasting 18 months. Despite bonding with the hyper-critical director, Cruise was forced to flex his considerable Hollywood muscle one day, after Kubrick had insisted on shooting 95 takes of him walking through a doorway. An exhausted Cruise insisted that they probably had enough material to work with.

Just days after presenting Warner Bros. with the final cut of the film he had spent more than 20 years thinking about, Kubrick died suddenly of natural causes, at 70 years of age, on March 7, 1999.

The filmmaker's mysterious streak continued even after his death, with his family asking Warner Bros. not to release details of the service or to identify any of the mourners. It is thought that he was buried in the grounds of his estate five days after he died - white lilies were seen being delivered at the property earlier in the day, and a fireworks display lit up the surrounding countryside after dark.

Friend and fellow director Steven Spielberg was quick to dismiss Kubrick's reclusive reputation: "He was terribly misunderstood... just because he didn't do a lot of press. When we spoke on the phone, our conversations lasted for hours. To those of us who were lucky enough to know him, he was a teddy bear - kind and passionate. "

For all the accolades and fame his films brought him, it seems that all Stanley Kubrick really wanted was a bit of privacy. But it was only in death that he finally found it.