DICK POPE

(August 1947 - 22 October 2024)

Dick Pope will forever be associated with his creative ally Mike Leigh, for whom he photographed eleven films. The collaboration began with Life is Sweet in 1990, which was voted best British film by the London Film Critics’ Circle, and culminated with Leigh’s latest, Hard Truths, starring Marianne Jean-Baptiste. Pope started in television, unsurprisingly, working on the current affairs programme World in Action between 1975 and 1978, before clocking up other TV credits such as Whoops Apocalypse, The South Bank Show and 40 Minutes. After lighting various music documentaries, he made his feature debut as DP on the Scottish romcom The Girl in the Picture (1985) and five years later found that Life is Sweet. He teamed up with Leigh again on the multi-award-winning Naked (1993) and was himself nominated for an Oscar for photographing Neil Burger’s The Illusionist (2006), starring Edward Norton. He received his second nomination for Leigh’s period-set Mr. Turner (2014), while other prominent projects included Richard Linklater’s Me and Orson Welles (2008), Brian Helgeland’s gangster biopic Legend (2015) and Edward Norton’s Motherless Brooklyn (2019). Before his last film, Hard Truths, he had undergone heart surgery, and has died, aged 77. He is survived by his wife Pat.

JAMES CAMERON-WILSON