Paul-Henri Thiry, Baron d'Holbach (8 December 1723 – 21 January 1789) was a French-German author, philosopher, encyclopedist and a prominent figure in the French Enlightenment. He was born Paul Heinrich Dietrich in Edesheim, near Landau in the Rhenish Palatinate, but lived and worked mainly in Paris, where he kept a salon. He is best known for his atheism and for his voluminous writings against religion, the most famous of them being the System of Nature (1770).

D’Holbach's mother Catherine Jacobina née Holbach (1684–1743) was the daughter of Johannes Jacobus Holbach († 1723) the Prince-Bishop's tax collector, or better for the Roman Catholic Diocese of Speyer. His father, Johann Jakob Dietrich, (with other notations: ger.: Johann Jakob Dirre; fr.: Jean Jacques Thiry) (1672–1756) was a wine-grower.

He was raised in Paris by his uncle Franz Adam Holbach, (or Adam François d’Holbach or Messire François-Adam, Baron d’Holbach, Seigneur de Heeze, Leende et autres Lieux) (approx. 1675–1753), who had become a millionaire by speculating on the Paris stock-exchange. With his financial support, d’Holbach attended the University of Leiden from 1744 to 1748 and went on to marry his second cousin, Basile-Geneviève d'Aine (1728–1754), on 11 December 1750. In 1753 both his uncle and his father died, leaving the 30-year-old d'Holbach with an enormous inheritance, such as Heeze Castle, Kasteel Heeze te Heeze.

Uwe Boll (German pronunciation: [ˈuːvə ˈbɔl]; born June 22, 1965) is a German director, producer and screenwriter, whose work includes several films adapted from video games. He finances his own films through his Boll KG production company. Many of his films are based on video game franchises, produced on a low budget and are direct-to-video which has caused derision from the gaming community.

Boll was born in Wermelskirchen. He studied at the University of Cologne and the University of Siegen, and holds a doctorate in literature.

He first decided to go into the movie business at ten years old, after seeing Marlon Brando's Mutiny on the Bounty.

Boll's first two major releases were the horror movie Blackwoods and the drama Heart of America, both of which he directed and co-wrote.

Boll is best-known for adapting video games into movies, having directed and produced a number of such adaptations, including House of the Dead, Alone in the Dark, Alone in the Dark II, BloodRayne, BloodRayne II: Deliverance,BloodRayne: The Third Reich, In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale, Postal and Far Cry.