Virgin Records co-founder had a string of hits as an independent film producer
Nik Powell, who has died of cancer aged 69, began his business career looking after the accounts of his childhood friend, Richard Branson, with whom he founded Virgin Records; when they went their separate ways he formed the British film industry’s most colourful double act with Stephen Woolley, producing some of the best-known British films of the last few decades, including Mona Lisa, The Crying Game, Last Orders, and Ladies in Lavender.
An erudite, impassioned man with longish hair and a penchant for wearing pinstripe jackets over scruffy slacks and scuffed shoes, Powell cultivated a half mockney, half midAtlantic accent and was once described as a
‘‘disarming cross between a tycoon and a superannuated hippy’’.
His life had ups and downs. For many years he struggled with epilepsy, and he encountered bankruptcy as well as commercial success. Yet he remained philosophical, observing that ‘‘risk-taking is an essential part of business. Louis B Mayer went bankrupt and, of course, Sam Goldwyn famously went bankrupt. They survived.’’
One of five children, Powell’s health problems were triggered by an accident aged 8, when he crashed his father’s moped into the garden wall, injuring his head. Fits began, requiring regular doses of barbiturates and continuing regularly until the early 1990s, when they miraculously disappeared.
Instead of succumbing to self-pity, Powell developed a fund of hilarious and dramatic stories of his affliction – of needing stitches to his face after falling through plate glass at the Virgin offices (‘‘the wonder was that I did not decapitate myself’’); of collapsing and cracking his head at a meeting with Harvey Weinstein; of being scraped off the pavement in New York by Chrissie Hynde of the Pretenders, and of seeing the inside of numerous exclusive hospitals. Although he would cheerfully admit to being at the heart of the rock’n’roll drugs scene, he claimed his affliction meant he never indulged in anything stronger than beer.
Powell met Branson at junior school in the 1950s. Instead of going to university, he joined Branson in London at his first enterprise, the magazine Student – officially as deputy editor, in reality as the accountant.
Still only 19, he resumed his education and won a place at Sussex University to read history. He lasted just two terms before Branson lured him back to help him establish the fledgling Virgin Records, which started out as a small mail-order business, offering Powell 40 per cent of the company.
The relationship fell apart in 1981 after 13 years, during which profits had risen from zero to more than £60 million. Branson got the better of the divorce: Powell received £1m and a few assets for his 40 per cent. Branson made his stake worth about £500m within 15 years, yet Powell harboured no ill-feelings.
At Virgin, Powell had been involved with making a couple of films, most notably The Great Rock’n’Roll Swindle (1980) with the Sex Pistols. In 1979 he met Stephen Woolley, who was trying to save La Scala cinema in King’s Cross from closure. Powell made Virgin money available, and established a store called Video Palace and appointed Woolley to supervise its stock.
In 1983 the pair founded Palace Pictures, which began as a film distribution company, before expanding into production. Its first film was Neil Jordan’s The Company of Wolves (1984), a critical success, and the company went from strength to strength with hits such as Letter to Brezhnev (1985), Mona Lisa (1986), Scandal (1989), and The Crying Game (1992), which bagged an Oscar and became one of the highest-grossing British independent films.
As distributors, Palace secured the rights to When Harry Met Sally (1989), scoring a coup
Nik Powell on his financial highs and lows
when they managed to get Diana, Princess of Wales, to attend the British premiere.
Even before the release of The Crying Game, however, cracks were beginning to show. Funds had leaked away through subsidiary companies, and debts were mounting. In 1993, after an abortive attempt to sell Palace to PolyGram, the company collapsed, with debts variously estimated at anything up to £30m. For Powell, the financial blow was put in the shade by the almost simultaneous collapse of his second marriage, to the pop singer Sandie Shaw, which left him, as he said at the time, ‘‘bankrupt, divorced and living in a bedsit’’.
Yet a few months later he and Woolley had founded Scala. Within three years it had become Britain’s busiest independent production company, with credits that went on to include Fever Pitch (1997), Little Voice (1998), Last Orders (2001) and Ladies in Lavender (2004), starring Dame Judi Dench.
Powell became more and more involved with the British film industry as a whole. He was a member of the British Screen Advisory Council, served as chairman of the European Film Academy, and was a prominent voice in the campaign for tax relief for the industry.
None the less, there was shock when he announced that he was to wind down his production work and take over as director of the cash-strapped National Film and Television School.
Over the next few years he led the NFTS to huge success, helping to devise a Bridges to Industry scheme to introduce NFTS talent to film companies and broadcasters. During his time as director, NFTS students received four Oscar nominations, won seven Bafta awards and 10 Cilect Global Student Film awards. His popularity with staff and students at the NFTS is attested by the outpouring of affectionate tributes on the NFTS website after his death.
He met his first wife, Merrill Tomassi, at the 1972 wedding of her sister, Kristen, to Richard Branson. Neither marriage lasted long. By his second marriage, to Sandie Shaw, he had a son and daughter, who survive him. –
‘‘Risk-taking is an essential part of business. Louis B Mayer went bankrupt and, of course, Sam Goldwyn famously went bankrupt. They survived.’’