Louie Edward Lawless is a Canadian film actor, documentary director, and Academy Award-nominated producer. Born in British Columbia, he traveled to California at the age of 18 and found work as an actor in Hollywood. He eventually became involved in the production of films and worked for over two decades in film production before returning to Canada in 1994. Since then, he has been involved with Kevin Annett in producing films that raise public awareness of the abuses of the Canadian Indian residential school system. He was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature in 1973 for his work on Manson and he won the Best Director award for a documentary at the 2006 New York International Independent Film and Video Festival for his film Unrepentant: Kevin Annett and Canada's Genocide.