Barrington "Barry" Sonnenfeld III (born April 1, 1953) is an American director, producer, writer and cinematographer in film and television.
He started in show business in adult films until the early 80s when he was the director of photography in the 1982 Academy Award nominated film In Our Water working with the Coen Brothers. He then worked with the Coens on their next two films Raising Arizona and Miller's Crossing, Danny DeVito for Throw Momma from the Train and Rob Reiner for his next two films When Harry Met Sally and Misery.
As the 90s began so did his directorial career when he directed The Addams Family in 1991 which turned out to be a critical and commercial success. Two years later he directed his first sequel Addams Family Values which wasn't as successful as the first one and the romantic comedy For Love or Money. In 1995 he was the producer and director of the critically acclaimed hit Get Shorty starring John Travolta. But probably his biggest impact on film was when he was hired by Steven Spielberg, Walter F Parkes and Laurie MacDonald to direct the 1997 Sci-Fi Action Comedy Men in Black starring Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones. MIB proved to be a big success for Sonnenfeld as well as Sony Pictures and Amblin Entertainment the studios backing the film. He also was an executive producer for the English dub of Rumiko Takahashi's Mermaid's Scar for The Sci-Fi Channel and Universal Television as well as the 1998 movie Out of Sight. However his first major loss was in 1999 when he directed Wild Wild West starring Will Smith, Kevin Kline, Kenneth Branagh and Salma Hayek.
When the new millennium approached he bounced back by being an executive producer for the Warner Bros dub for Cardcaptor Sakura along with Joss Whedon, producing a live action TV series of The Tick starring Patrick Warburton as the titular superhero producing Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events produced by fellow MIB crew Walter F Parkes and Laurie MacDonald and directing two Men in Black sequels in 2002 and 2012. He has also done other movies like Big Trouble, RV, Enchanted, Space Chimps, Nine Lives and an upcoming animated film with DreamWorks called "The Puttermans".