By the time he was done with life and cinema in 1980, he would rewrite the rules of suspense in filmmaking, and pave the way for directors like Manoj Night Shyamalan to start sneaking cameo appearances of themselves in their own films. Not bad for a guy who began by designing title cards for silent films!

From working with screenwriters -- who let him to direct some scenes that didn't include actors -- he moved up the ladder to the post of assistant director, then director.

From there, the list of successes to his credit simply grew. There was The 39 Steps, The Lady Vanishes, and The Man Who Knew Too Much. He then moved to Hollywood and created Rebecca, which won the Oscar for Best Picture in 1940 and got him a Best Director nomination.

By the 1950s, Hitchcock was powerful enough to begin playing with the genre he had helped define. Classics like Psycho, Vertigo, Rear Window and The Birds arrived on screens in quick succession, as he mastered the art of the psychological thriller.

He won the American Film Institute's Life Achievement Award in 1979, and was knighted the year he died.

Photograph: Portrait of Alfred Hitchcock taken in 1972 at the Cannes international film festival. (Getty Images)

Also Read: The week Priyanka Chopra was born

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