Vale: Michael Apted

British director Michael Apted, best known for Seven Up and Gorillas in the Mist, has died aged 79.

He died at home in Los Angeles, but the cause of death has not been revealed.

In 1964 he helped director Paul Almond on Seven Up! interviews as part of the current affairs show World in Action, profiling 14 seven-year-old children. He continued to revisit them every seven years over the course of their lives, most recently for, 63 Up, released in 2019.

“The series was an attempt to do a long view of English society,” Apted said in an interview last year. “The class system needed a kick up the backside.”

His first major film success was Coal Miner’s Daughter, followed by Gorillas in the Mist, Enigma, The World is Not Enough, The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader and, most recently, Unlocked starring Noomi Rapace.

“What I like about women at the center of films is that I find that a woman character brings a lot of emotion to a story, whatever a story is,” he said in a 2017 interview. “Whether it’s a woman with gorillas or a country music singer, a woman’s emotional life – at least on the surface – is more dramatic than a man’s.”

He also directed episodes of Bloodline, Masters of Sex, Ray Donovan and Rome.

Source: The Guardian