His move into the mainstream with To Die For, and the success of Good Will Hunting, established him as a serious player in the industry after the more experimental and personal tack of earlier films Mala Noche, Drugstore Cowboy, My Own Private Idaho and Even Cowgirls Get the Blues. Both To Die For and Good Will Hunting showed traces of his concern with disaffected teenagers and homosexuality, yet - particularly with Good Will Hunting, where he was working from a screenplay written by his two leads Ben Affleck and Matt Damon - the films play the game far more than his earlier works. My Own Private Idaho achieved a degree of notoriety after River Phoenix's death, when claims abounded that it was Phoenix's performance (the best of his career) as a narcoleptic rent boy that had introduced him to drugs. Van Sant's reputation for forcing Hollywood stars to extremes - and extracting brilliant performances thereby - was confirmed by Nicole Kidman's performance in To Die For, which established her as a serious actress, and by Robin Williams in Good Will Hunting in his only non-vomit inducing showing since Mrs Doubtfire.

Van Sant used his industry carte-blanche after the Oscar-fuelled success of Good Will Hunting to direct Psycho 1998, his shot-by-shot remake of Hitchcock's classic thriller. Raising the stakes of cinematic possibility, he proved that even working within the mainstream he could challenge industry standards. Although the film was panned, it provoked a great deal of discussion about horror films, sexuality and artistic credibility - always the intention of a director who is also a novelist (Pink), music video director (Under the Bridge, Red Hot Chilli Peppers), painter and musician (18 Songs about Golf). Returning to the wide open spaces of My Own Private Idaho and the charming Even Cowgirls Get the Blues, Van Sant's next movie is a Larry McMurtry adaptation of E. Annie Proulx's novella Brokeback Mountain. Though the story itself is dangerously close to the South Park approximation of indie cinema ("gay cowboys eating pudding"), it brings Van Sant back to what he does best - the tortures of being different, and a tentative gay relationship played out against spectacular scenery. Ever unpredictable, Van Sant is proof and inspiration that different doesn't have to mean bad.

Sophie Levy