MICHAEL APTED

(10 February 1941 - 7 January 2021)

The English director Michael Apted, who has died aged 79, will be remembered for his television series 7 Up which ran from 1964, charting the lives every seven years of a group of fourteen children as they grew into adulthood. The last episode, 63 Up, was made in 2019. He began his career as a trainee at Granada TV, worked as a researcher and started on the award-winning Up series which grew out of World in Action. He worked on other Granada programmes including a series with Laurence Olivier and several plays by Jack Rosenthal, as well as the BBC’s Play for Today series. He shot his first feature, The Triple Echo in 1972, with Glenda Jackson and Oliver Reed. Stardust (1974) was a vehicle for David Essex about the up-and-down life of a rock singer. Then came The Squeeze, a crime drama with Stacy Keach, and a run of films including Agatha with Vanessa Redgrave, Coal Miner’s Daughter with Sissy Spacek, Continental Divide with John Belushi and Gorky Park with William Hurt. Between his TV work Apted filmed Critical Condition with Richard Pryor, Gorillas in the Mist with Sigourney Weaver, Class Action with Gene Hackman, Nell with Jodie Foster and Extreme Measures with Hugh Grant and Gene Hackman. The World Is Not Enough was his only 007 movie, with Pierce Brosnan. Tom Stoppard wrote the screenplay for Enigma, about codebreaking at Bletchley Park. From 2000 Apted worked mainly in television except for Amazing Grace about the slave trade abolitionist William Wilberforce. His last film was Unlocked, a thriller with Noomi Rapace and Michael Douglas in 2017. Michael Apted married and divorced the actresses Jo Proctor and Dana Stevens. At his death he was married to the producer Paige Simpson, and he has three children. He was the winner of three Bafta TV Awards and another twenty awards including a Grammy for Bring On the Night, his documentary on Sting.

MICHAEL DARVELL