'Die Hard' director faces jail sentence

Die Hard director John McTiernan has been handed a four-month jail sentence and has until January to hand himself in.

The filmmaker admitted to making false statements to the FBI over its investigation into celebrity detective Anthony Pellicano. But he later withdrew the guilty plea, claiming that he had insufficient legal representation, while his defence team said that he was on antibiotics at the time and had just come off anti-depressants.

But the arguments were thrown aside by the judge who said they were "completely lacking in credibility".

McTiernan claimed during an interview at the time that he was unaware that Pellicano was wiretapping celebrities, but he later admitted he had used the detective to investigate Charles Roven, who worked with him on Rollerball.

Pellicano could be jailed for up to 20 years after breaching the privacy of stars such as Sylvester Stallone and Garry Shandling by obtaining their private records.

McTiernan will have to turn himself in by January 15 and has been fined $100,000, but his lawyer has suggested that an appeal will be made.