Lauded Brit director dies
Roeg made gems: “Don’t Look Now“, Walkabout,” more
Nicolas Roeg, a British director acclaimed for a string of films in the 1970s that included the rite-ofpassage tale “Walkabout,” the psychological thriller “Don’t Look Now” and the David Bowie vehicle “The Man Who Fell to Earth,” died Friday. He was 90.
A son, Nicholas Jr., confirmed the death to Britain’s Press Association. The cause and location were not given.
Roeg came up through the filmmaking ranks, spending 20 years as a camera operator and cinematographer before serving as one of two directors (along with Donald Cammell) of “Performance,” a 1970 drama about the London rock world.
It starred Mick Jagger of the Rolling Stones, and Roeg would go on to feature other singers in acting roles — Bowie in “The
Man Who Fell to Earth” in 1976 and Art Garfunkel in “Bad Timing” in 1980. Roeg maintained that the seeming challenge wasn’t all that formidable.
“The fact is Jagger, Bowie and Garfunkel are all extremely bright, intelligent and well educated,” he told The New York Times in 1980. “A long way from the public stereotype.”
Nicolas Jack Roeg was born on Aug. 15, 1928, in London to Jack and Mabel (Silk) Roeg. He did not attend film school, instead entering the business at the bottom in 1947, making tea and operating the clapperboard at Marylebone Studios in London.
He worked his way up to camera operator and then cinematographer, receiving the director of photography credit on films like François Truffaut’s “Fahrenheit 451” and Richard Lester’s “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum,” both in 1966. He also shot Lester’s “Petulia” (1968), which featured the jump cuts and leaps in time that would be among Roeg’s signatures.
“Performance,” his first directing credit, was completed in the late 1960s but shelved because Warner Bros. had misgivings about it. Some critics savaged it when it was released, but its reputation grew over time. In 1999 it made the British Film Institute’s list of the 100 best British movies ever made, as did “Don’t Look Now.”
“Walkabout,” Roeg’s first solo directing credit, released in 1971, told the story of a teenage girl and her brother who were abandoned in the Australian desert and are befriended by a young Aborigine. Roeg was his own cinematographer on the film.
“The Man Who Fell to Earth” further enhanced Roeg’s reputation for making challenging, visually adventurous films.
Roeg, whose first marriage, to Susan Stephen in 1957, ended in divorce, married his lead actress from “Bad Timing,” Theresa Russell, in 1982. She also appeared in several of his other films.
Also among his later films was “The Witches” (1990).
Roeg’s marriage to Russell ended in divorce. In 2005, he married Harriet Harper, who survives him.
In addition to her and Nicholas Jr., he is survived by several other children.