ROBERT ZEMECKIS

After Romancing the Stone set the box office on fire, Robert Zemeckis went on to direct the three Back to the Future films, and won an Oscar for Forrest Gump. Zemeckis is currently filming an adaptation of Roald Dahl’s story The Witches, starring Anne Hathaway and Octavia Spencer.

DIANE THOMAS

Romancing the Stone was the debut screenwriting credit for Diane Thomas, who looked set for great things after the film was a critical and commercial hit.

She was working on a film with Steven Spielberg when, tragically, she died in a car accident at the age of 39. The UCLA Diane Thomas Screenwriting Award was set up in her honour, to help novice writers, and one of the winners, Stuart Beattie, went on to write Collateral, starring Tom Cruise, and Pirates of The Caribbean, a rollicking adventure Thomas would surely have approved off.