George A. Romero

George Andrew Romero (; February 4, 1940 – July 16, 2017) was an American-Canadian filmmaker, writer, editor and actor. His Night of the Living Dead series of films about an imagined zombie apocalypse began with the original Night of the Living Dead (1968) and is considered a major contributor to the image of the zombie in modern culture. Other films in the series include Dawn of the Dead (1978) and Day of the Dead (1985). Aside from this series, his works include The Crazies (1973), Martin (1977), Knightriders (1981), Creepshow (1982), Monkey Shines (1988), The Dark Half (1993), and Bruiser (2000). He also created and executive-produced the television series Tales from the Darkside from 1983 to 1988. Romero is often described as an influential pioneer of the horror film genre and has been called the "Father of the Zombie Film" and an "icon". Early life Romero was born on February 4, 1940, in the New York City borough of the Bronx, the son of Anne Romero (Dvorsky) and George Romero, a commercial artist. His mother was Lithuanian, and his father was from Spain but had immigrated to Cuba as a child. His father has been reported as being born in A Coruña, with his family coming from the Galician town of Neda, although Romero once described his father as of Castilian descent. Raised in the Parkchester section of the Bronx, he would frequently ride the subway into Manhattan to rent film reels to view at his house. He was one of only two people who repeatedly rented the opera-based film The Tales of Hoffmann; the other was future director Martin Scorsese. Romero attended Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh.