Director of ‘Notting Hill’
ROGER MICHELL | 1956-2021
LONDON — Roger Michell, the British stage, television and film director whose movies include the indelibly popular romcom “Notting Hill,” has died, his family said Thursday. He was 65.
Mr. Michell’s family said in a statement that he died on Wednesday. They didn’t disclose the place or cause of death.
“It is with great sadness that the family of Roger Michell, director, writer and father of Harry, Rosie, Maggie and Sparrow, announce his death at the age of 65 on Sept. 22,” said the statement released through Mr. Michell’s publicist.
Born in South Africa, where his father was posted as a British diplomat, Mr. Michell began his directing career with British theaters including the Royal Court, the National Theatre and the Royal Shakespeare Company.
He made acclaimed television series in the 1990s, including adaptations of Hanif Kureishi’s novel “The Buddha of Suburbia” and Jane Austen’s “Persuasion.”
On the big screen, his biggest commercial hit was “Notting Hill,” the Richard Curtis-penned comedy about an awkward romance between a movie star played by Julia Roberts and a London bookshop owner, played by Hugh Grant.
After its release in 1999 it was for a time the highest-grossing British film in history, and Mr. Michell followed it with Hollywood thriller “Changing Lanes,” starring Ben Affleck and Samuel L. Jackson.
He was courted to direct a James Bond film — the one that became “Quantum of Solace” — but turned it down because, he later said, it “had everything, but no script.”
Later films included “Venus,” which gained Peter O’Toole an Academy Award nomination in 2007; “Hyde Park on Hudson,” a 2012 historical drama starring Bill Murray as President Franklin D. Roosevelt; and a Daphne du Maurier adaptation “My Cousin Rachel,” starring Rachel Weisz, released in 2017.
Mr. Michell was married twice: to actor Kate Buffery, and after their divorce to actor Anna Maxwell Martin, from whom he was separated.