Offbeat Director Nicolas Roeg Dies @ 90

He directed Mick Jagger (b. 1943), David Bowie (1947-2016) and Elizabeth Taylor (1932-2011), among many others, establishing himself as an iconoclastic, visually adventurous director.

Nicolas Roeg: August 15, 1928—November 23, 2018 (Image via head shot)

Friday, Nicolas Roeg died, ExtraTV reports. He was 90.

Red Death notice (GIF via GIPHY)

The British-born auteur entered the film industry in 1947 as a tea boy, eventually working his way into cinematography. He was a second-unit cinematographer on the classic Lawrence of Arabia (1962), worked on (but was fired from) Doctor Zhivago (1965), and shot such diverse films as The Masque of the Red Death (1964) and Fahrenheit 451 (1966).

With Donald Cammell (1934-1996), he co-directed Performance (1970), the highly regarded drama starring Jagger, following it with the highly controversial Walkabout (1971), which made waves with its depiction of animals being killed and 17-year-old Jenny Agutter (b. 1952) nude.

Perhaps his most acclaimed film is the occult thriller Don't Look Now (1973), with its creepy obsession with water and the color red, and classic performances by Donald Sutherland (b. 1935) and Julie Christie (b. 1940). It was also famous for a sex scene between those actors, which depicted oral sex in a daringly graphic manner.

Don't look then! (GIF via GIPHY)

In 1976, Roeg directed The Man Who Fell to Earth, casting Bowie in a rare acting role as an extraterrestrial.

Some of Roeg's other work includes: Bad Timing (1980),  after which he married his leading lady, Theresa Russell (b. 1957); Insignificance (1985); Track 29 (1988); The Witches (1990); and his final feature, Puffball (2007).

In 1989, he directed the NBC adaptation of Sweet Bird of Youth, starring Elizabeth Taylor (1932-2011).

Roeg, married three times, is survived by his wife Harriet and six children.

 

 

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