Sir David Lean KBE was an Academy Award-winning English film director and producer, best remembered for big-screen epics such as Brief Encounter, Lawrence of Arabia, The Bridge on the River Kwai, Doctor Zhivago and A Passage to India. Widely acclaimed and winning the praise of directors such as Steven Spielberg, Martin Scorsese, Stanley Kubrick, and George Lucas, Lean was voted 9th greatest film director of all time in the BFI "Directors Top Directors" poll 2002.