Directed ‘Fame,’ ‘Mississippi Burning,’ ‘Evita’
LONDON — Filmmaker Alan Parker, one of Britain’s most successful directors whose movies included “Bugsy Malone,” “Midnight Express” and “Evita,” has died at 76, his family said.
Mr. Parker’s diverse body of work includes “Fame,” Mississippi Burning, “The Commitments” and “Angela’s Ashes.” Together his movies won 10 Academy Awards and 19 British Academy Film Awards.
In a statement, the family said Mr. Parker died Friday in London after a long illness.
Mr. Parker was born in London in 1944 and, like many other aspiring British directors including Ridley Scott, began his career in advertising.
He moved into television with the critically acclaimed 1974 drama “The Evacuees,” which won an international Emmy Award
The next year he wrote and directed his first feature, “Bugsy Malone,” an unusual and exuberant musical pastiche of gangster films with a cast of children, including a young Jodie Foster.
He followed that with “Midnight Express,” the story based on an American’s harrowing incarceration in a Turkish prison. It won two Oscars and gained Mr. Parker a bestdirector nomination.
Mr. Parker ranged widely across subjects and genres. “Shoot the Moon” was a family drama, “Angel Heart” an occult thriller and “Mississippi Burning” a powerful civil rights drama that was nominated for seven Academy Awards.
Mr. Parker was a notable director of musicals. “Fame” was a gritty but celebratory story of life at a performing arts high school; “Pink Floyd — the Wall” was a surreal rock opera; and “Evita” cast Madonna as Argentine first lady Eva Peron in a big-screen version of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s musical.