Michael Apted, the British director who had a celebrated career in cinema, notably behind the groundbreaking, "Up" documentary series, passed away on January 7th. The prolific filmmaker had died at his home in Los Angeles from undisclosed causes at the age of seventy-nine.
Born in Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire, Apted began his career working in television as a researcher for Granada Television in Manchester. This lead to one of his first major projects in 1964 which was a documentary that profiled 14 seven year-old boys and girls that represented a range of backgrounds, examining each child's social class to determine their future. It was called "7 Up", directed by Paul Almond and was originally intended to be one film. Yet the documentary proved so popular that Apted returned to these children every seven years, directing a total of nine episodes, beginning in 1970 and over the next fifty-six years with the last, "64 Up" released in 2019.
Apted would work extensively in television, directing episodes of several British programs, before he would make his feature film debut with "The Triple Echo" in 1972 featuring Oliver Reed and Glenda Jackson. By 1979, Hollywood came calling and he made "Agatha", a drama about the eleven day disappearance of mystery writer Agatha Christie in 1926 that starred Vanessa Redgrave and Dustin Hoffman. And while this film was not commercially successful, Apted would get another opportunity to direct in this country and the film, "Coal Miner's Daughter" would be his major breakthrough. This 1980 bio-pic on country singer, Loretta Lynn was a box-office hit and earned seven Academy Award nominations (including Best Picture) with star, Sissy Spacek winning the Oscar for Best Actress.
Some highlights of Apted's career as a director include "Gorillas in the Mist", the bio on primate researcher, Dian Fossey that starred Sigourney Weaver; the Russian-based mystery-thriller, "Gorky Park"; "Thunderheart" a neo-western mystery starring Val Kilmer; Jodie Foster earned an Oscar nomination playing an isolated woman who faces other people for the first time in "Nell"; the 2002 Jennifer Lopez thriller, "Enough" where she plays an traumatized wife who learns to fight back against her abusive spouse; the third and final installment of "the Chronicles of Narnia" film series, "The Voyage of the Dawn Treader" and the James Bond film, "The World Is Not Enough" with Pierce Brosnan.
Apted was elected to serve on the Motion Picture Academy's Board of Governors to represent the documentary branch in 2002, then would serve three terms as President of the Directors Guild of America from 2003 to 2009 and received the DGA's Robert Alrich Award in 2013.
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