LEWIS GILBERT

(6 March 1920 - 23 February 2018)

The British film director Lewis Gilbert, who has died at the age of 97, was at the forefront of the UK film industry for over forty years, creating some of Britain’s most popular movies. He worked with many major British actors including Laurence Harvey, Michael Redgrave, Dirk Bogarde, Margaret Lockwood, Kenneth More, Michael Caine, Alec Guinness, Sean Connery, Roger Moore, Julie Walters and Pauline Collins, to name but a few. He also wrote and produced many of the films he directed, becoming the doyen of British cinema. Beginning with documentary shorts in the 1940s, his first feature was The Little Ballerina (1947) about a budding dancer; the film included a performance by Margot Fonteyn. Then he made a series of thrillers including Once a Sinner, Scarlet Thread, There Is Another Sun, Cosh Boy and The Good Die Young. Then came the war films: Albert R.N., The Sea Shall Not Have Them, Reach for the Sky, Carve Her Name With Pride, Sink the Bismarck!, Light Up the Sky! and the period sea drama H.M.S. Defiant. He made Alfie with Michael Caine and then the first of his three Bond films, You Only Live Twice, followed by The Spy Who Loved Me (Gilbert’s favourite film), and Moonraker. Later successes in the 1980s included Educating Rita, Shirley Valentine and Stepping Out with Liza Minnelli. His last work was on Haunted (1995), a ghost story by James Herbert, and Before You Go (2002), a family comedy with Julie Walters. Lewis Gilbert was Oscar-nominated for Alfie and won a Bafta for Educating Rita, received the British Academy’s Michael Balcon Award in 1990, and was created a BFI Fellow in 2001. He won at Cannes for Alfie and also received the Dilys Powell Award from the London Film Critics’ Circle, among many other awards. He was married to Hylda Tafler (sister of the actor Sidney Tafler) who died in 2005. He had a son, Stephen, and a stepson John.

MICHAEL DARVELL