Robert Lee Zemeckis (born May 14, 1951) is an American film director, producer (Film producer) and screenwriter. Zemeckis first came to public attention in the 1980s as the director of the comedic time-travel Back to the Future (Back to the Future (film series)) movie series, as well as the Oscar-winning (Academy Award) live-action/cartoon epic, Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988), though in the 1990s he diversified into more dramatic fare, including 1994s Forrest Gump, for which he won an Academy Award for Best Director.

His films are characterized by an interest in state-of-the-art special effects, including the early use of match moving in Back to the Future Part II (1989) and the pioneering performance capture techniques seen in The Polar Express (The Polar Express (film)) (2004), Beowulf (Beowulf (2007 film)) (2007) and A Christmas Carol (A Christmas Carol (2009 film)) (2009). Though Zemeckis has often been pigeonholed as a director interested only in effects, his work has been defended by several critics, including David Thomson (David Thomson (film critic)), who wrote that "No other contemporary director has used special effects to more dramatic and narrative purpose."