American motion-picture writer and director who showed great promise with such early low-budget films as They Live by Night (1948–49), Knock on Any Door (1949), and Johnny Guitar (1954).

Ray studied architecture and theatre at the University of Chicago and was directing plays by the mid-1930s. He worked with John Houseman and Elia Kazan in New York City and was taken to Hollywood by Kazan to work as an assistant director on the film A Tree Grows in Brooklyn in 1944. In 1947 Houseman, who had become involved in film production at RKO Radio Pictures, enabled Ray to direct his first feature film, They Live By Night, which was typical of his early work in its exploration of the themes of violence and youthful rebellion. Ray's film In a Lonely Place (1950) was an acclaimed commentary on Hollywood society, while Rebel Without a Cause (1955) is an account of middle-class juvenile delinquency. The latter film starred James Dean, and critics praised Ray for his compassionate portrait of a teenager ignored by his parents. Ray's film The True Story of Jesse James (1957) brought him into conflict with the Hollywood studios, and his subsequent films, notably The Savage Innocents (1959), King of Kings (1961), and 55 Days at Peking (1963), were shot partly in Europe and Canada.

After that Ray tried directing in Yugoslavia, taught at the State University of New York, and worked for a number of years on the film We Can't Go Home Again. He was the subject of a feature-length documentary, I'm A Stranger Here Myself (1974), and collaborated with the German filmmaker Wim Wenders on Lightning over Water (1980), a semidocumentary of Ray's last days and death.