Robinson was chosen to appear as Benvolio in Franco Zeffirelli's "Romeo and Juliet" during his third year of drama school and acted in several films--notably "The Story of Adele H." (1975), as Lieutenant Pinson--before giving up performing in 1975 to concentrate on writing.

It took ten years and 20 screenplays before Robinson's work reached the screen, in the shape of the Oscar-winning "The Killing Fields" (1984), directed by Roland Joffe. Robinson parlayed the success of "Fields" into his first directing assignment, the critically acclaimed, semi-autobiographical "Withnail and I" (1987). A