Reprinted from The Hollywood Reporter "Neo-Virtuosos" article
February 2001, by Jay Holben

Born in San Francisco but raised in Vancouver, Canada, Robert McLachlan is the son of an artist and avid photography enthusiast. "I grew up around images," McLachlan recalls. "Probably the best piece of advice that my father gave to me was that it really didn’t matter what I did in life as long as it was something I loved. I loved photography, but I wasn’t sure there was a way to make a living at it!"

While attending university in Vancouver, a short documentary that McLachlan photographed gained enough attention that companies came to him to shoot their industrial films. With a fellow film student, McLachlan formed a small company to produce these industrial films as well as TV commercials and documentaries.

In the late 1980s, the filmmaker came to realize he was spending too much of his life as a businessman and not enough time doing what he loved -- photography. So he left most of the business to his partner and ventured out to create images. McLachlan received his first small break shooting the adventure series Beach Combers and then applied his newly found aquatic experience to the CBS telefilm Adrift. That, in turn, led the cinematographer to the Stephen J. Cannell ABC series The Commish and then to Fox’s series Strange Luck which caught the eye of The X-Files creator, Chris Carter.

Carter invited McLachlan to join the team of Millennium during which time he met X-Files scribes Glen Morgan and James Wong. McLachlan formed a tightly knit relationship with the duo, who brought him along to shoot his first studio feature, the hit Final Destination.

In 2001, McLachlan shot Morgan and Wong’s next endeavor, The One starring Jet Li.

Bio by Jay Holben

UPDATE 2006 - Currently engaged as 2nd. Unit Director/Cameraman on The Golden Compass - His Dark Materials for New Line Cinema, at Shepperton Studios, London, until late January 2007.