Director Nicolas Roeg has passed away

Director Nicolas Roeg has died aged 90. Mr Roeg, who was born in London, passed away last night, his family confirmed.

Roeg was a second-unit cinematographer on David Lean’s Lawrence of Arabia (1962) and this led to Lean’s hiring Roeg as cinematographer on his follow-up Doctor Zhivago. However, that did not end well as Roeg and Lean argued about the look of the film. This ended with Roeg being fired from the production and replaced with Freddie Young who received sole credit for cinematography when the film was released in 1965. Roeg was credited as cinematographer on Roger Corman’s The Masque of the Red Death and François Truffaut’s Fahrenheit 451, as well as John Schlesinger’s Far from the Madding Crowd and Richard Lester’s Petulia.

He then moved into directing and with his wonderful visual style brought us the likes of Performance, Walkabout, Don’t Look Now, The Man Who Fell To Earth, and The Witches.

His techniques and films influenced filmmakers such as Steven Soderbergh, Tony Scott, Ridley Scott, François Ozon, Christopher Nolan and Danny Boyle.

Nicolas Roeg was one of cinema’s greats and he will be sadly missed.