ROGER MICHELL
(5 June 1956 - 22 September 2021)
The British film, television and theatre director Roger Michell, who has died suddenly in his sleep, aged 65, was born in South Africa where his father was a British diplomat. He began directing at Clifton College in Bristol and also at Queen's College, Cambridge, where he also acted. Following university, he directed plays for the Brighton Actors Workshop and eventually joined the Royal Court Theatre in London in 1978. On leaving the Court he directed his own play Private Dick, co-written with Richard Maher, which transferred from Hammersmith to the West End. He became a resident director at the Royal Shakespeare Company and later joined the BBC, working on Hanif Kureishi's The Buddha of Suburbia, Jane Austen's Persuasion, Kevin Elyot's My Night With Reg and other projects. Directing at the National Theatre in the 1990s saw him staging plays by Harold Pinter, Dylan Thomas, Joe Penhall, Harley Granville Barker and Nina Raine. For the cinema, Michell directed Richard Curtis's Notting Hill (1999), Changing Lanes (2002) with Ben Affleck and Samuel L. Jackson, The Mother (2003) with Anne Reid and Daniel Craig, Enduring Love (2004), also with Craig, and Venus (2006), with Peter O'Toole. After more theatre work, Roger Michell returned to the cinema with Morning Glory (2010) starring Rachel McAdams, Hyde Park on Hudson (2012) with Bill Murray as Franklin D. Roosevelt, Le Week-End (2013) with Jim Broadbent and Lindsay Duncan, My Cousin Rachel (2017) with Rachel Weisz as Rachel Ashley, Blackbird (2019) with Susan Sarandon, Kate Winslet and Lindsay Duncan, and The Duke (2020) with Jim Broadbent and Helen Mirren. He also directed the BBC documentary Nothing Like a Dame, with Judi Dench, Maggie Smith, Eileen Atkins and Joan Plowright. Roger Michell was first married to the actress Kate Buffery and they have two children, the agent Rosanna Michell, and the writer-actor-director Harry Michell. He also married the actress Anna Maxwell Martin and they have two daughters, Maggie and Nancy.
MICHAEL DARVELL