Roger Michell

1956-2021

Roger Michell is an English theatre, television and film director. He started as assistant director to noted British playwright John Osborne and Irish playwright Samuel Beckett. In 1985, Michell joined the Royal Shakespeare Company where, over six years, he was an assistant director and then a resident director. As a film director, he made Persuasion (1995) which won the BAFTA for Best Single Drama. In 1999, Michell directed Notting Hill, one of the highest-grossing British movies of all time, and in 2002 box office hit Changing Lanes. He directed The Mother in 2003, Enduring Love in 2004, Venus in 2006 and Morning Glory in 2010. After Hyde Park on Hudson (2012), in which Bill Murray played the role of Franklin D.Roosevelt, he directed the European Film Award nominated Le Week-end (2013), about a British couple resolved to re-live its honeymoon in Paris. Michell has since been working for British television, directing the BAFTA-awarded mini-series The Lost Honour of Christopher Jefferies (2014), as well as the humorous film Birthday (2015), about the quirky story of a pregnant man, which was awarded the “Fipa d’or” at the 2016 International Festival of Audiovisual Programmes of Biarritz. The year 2017 has seen his comeback to the big screen, as a director and a writer, with his feature film My cousin Rachel based upon the 1951 novel of the same name by Daphne du Maurier. His next movie, Blackbird (2019) with Susan Sarandon and Kate Winslet premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival and San Sebastian International Film Festival in September 2019. He finished shooting his last film The Duke (2020) with Jim Broadbent and Helen Mirren just before the first lockdown in UK and was selected to present it to the Venice International Film Festival (out of competition) in September 2020.