The Partners’ Film Company director Rupert Wainwright started his directorial career in the theatre, but with little encouragement from those who came to see his plays he decided to try his hand at film, a switch that proved positive for the young man.

Wainwright started writing and directing for the stage at the age of 16. He grew up in Oxford, Eng., attending the illustrious university there, and later earned a scholarship to study film at ucla.

With a short film for Columbia, an mow for Warner Bros. and abc, and some music videos under his belt, he landed his first commercial job, a spot for Reebok starring actor/comedian Sinbad.

‘We had two days to do the shoot and they asked me if I thought I could do a :30. I looked at them like they were mad and said we could probably do six,’ says Wainwright. ‘I shot tons of really cool footage and in the end they cut four spots, which won awards and sold shoes.’

In 1991, he helmed a kids’ movie for Disney called Blank Check, and after that made a ‘very indie’ movie with The Partners’ Film Company called The Sadness of Sex, which Wainwright says is like ‘poetry meets mtv.’ The film features a guy on stage telling stories, each of which is presented using a different visual style – stock footage, stop-motion animation, black-and-white, and color.

What happened to The Sadness of Sex? A commonly asked question, according to the director. ‘It went to all the festivals, opened in l.a., and then the company that was releasing it went bankrupt and it has been sitting in court ever since,’ he says.

Wainwright’s latest and greatest vehicle is a $30-million horror flick called Stigmata, which he screened with friends and colleagues recently while in Toronto shooting a job for Canada Post out of bcp, Montreal.

Stigmata is about faith and belief and stars Patricia Arquette and Gabriel Byrne. It opens everywhere Sept. 10.

Wainwright came across the script about eight years ago, and although he was intrigued by the story no one else seemed to be. Eventually, he came across Frank Mancuso Jr., who was interested in making a movie about the Vatican, so they incorporated the Vatican into the story and in January 1998 the cameras started rolling.

All the fx were done the ‘old-fashioned way’ since Wainwright ‘can’t bear cgi…it destroys the imagination.’

Budget-wise, Stigmata is the largest film the director has done. As for shorter projects, Wainwright shot a four-minute, $8-million commercial for Michael Jackson (that’s $2 million a minute, more than the per-minute cost of Titanic).

And speaking of Titanic, Wainwright is in development with James Cameron on The Furthest Place, an action picture set in Shanghai. Cameron will produce and Wainwright will direct.