Biography
Hal Needham was an American stuntman, film director, actor and writer. Born Hal Brett Needham on 6 March 1931 in Memphis, Tennessee, he began his career performing stunts in numerous television series and feature films from the late 1950s onwards.
He directed several action comedies, most notably Smokey and the Bandit (1977) and its sequel Smokey and the Bandit II (1980), as well as Hooper (1978) and The Cannonball Run (1981). Needham frequently collaborated with actor Burt Reynolds and received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Taurus World Stunt Awards in 2001 and a Governors Award from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in 2012. He died on 25 October 2013.
