Renny Harlin Movies and Career Information

Renny Harlin (born Lauri Mauritz Harjola, 15 March 1959) is a Finnish film director and producer. He is best known for Die Hard 2 (1990), Cliffhanger (1993), The Long Kiss Goodnight (1996) and Deep Blue Sea (1999). His film Cutthroat Island (1995) is listed in the Guinness Book of World Records as the biggest box office flop of all time. Renny Harlin was born in Riihimäki, Finland to a nurse mother and a physician father. His mother often took him to see films at the cinema as a child, particularly those of Alfred Hitchcock, and he became enamored with the movies often citing Sam Peckinpah’s The Wild Bunch (1969) as one of his favourites. Harlin had a video camera from a very early age and made his first short at the age of 12. At the age of 14 he decided to became a film director after he saw Don Siegel and Charles Bronson in Helsinki for the filming of Telefon (1977). In 1980, Harlin was working as a commercial director for companies such as Shell Oil while he wrote and directed the 6-minute short Huostaanotto (a.k.a. Custody International) which received its belated premier on Finnish television on 4 November 1979. The following year, 1981, he was assistant cameraman on