Wes Craven /

Wesley Earl "Wes" Craven (born August 2, 1939) is an American actor, film director, writer, producer, perhaps best known as the director of many horror films, including the famed A Nightmare on Elm Street and Wes Craven's New Nightmare, featuring the iconic Freddy Krueger character, the Scream films, alongside The Last House on the Left, The Hills Have Eyes, The Serpent and the Rainbow, The People Under the Stairs, Vampire in Brooklyn, Red Eye, and My Soul to Take. Craven was born in Cleveland, Ohio, the son of Caroline (née Miller) and Paul Craven. He had a strict Baptist upbringing. Craven earned an undergraduate degree in English and Psychology from Wheaton College in Illinois, and a masters degree in Philosophy and Writing from Johns Hopkins University. Prior to landing his first job in the film industry as a sound editor for a post-production company in New York, Craven briefly taught English at Westminster College and was a humanities professor at Clarkson College of Technology (now Clarkson University) in Potsdam, New York. Craven's works tend to share a common exploration of the nature of reality. A Nightmare on Elm Street, for example, dealt with the consequences of dreams