Obituary

Versatile director Michael Apted known for Up documentaries

Michael Apted, at the 65th annual Directors Guild of America Awards in Los Angeles in 2013, also directed Oscar nominee Gorillas In The Mist. PHOTO: REUTERS

LOS ANGELES • Michael Apted, a versatile director who made his most lasting mark with the Up documentary series (1964 to 2019), which followed the lives of a group of British people in seven-year intervals for more than a half century, died last Thursday at his home in Los Angeles. He was 79.

His agent in the United States, Mr Roy Ashton, confirmed the death but did not specify a cause.

Apted, who was British, was a researcher at Granada Television in England when he helped pick the 14 children, all of them aged seven, who became the subjects of Seven Up!. The initial documentary in the Up series, it was directed by the late Paul Almond and shown on British television in 1964.

The film was intended as a one-off, but Apted picked up the ball seven years (more or less) later, acting as director of 7 Plus Seven, broadcast in England in late 1970, in which he interviewed the same children, now at a more developed stage of life.

Then came 21 Up in 1977, 28 Up in 1984 and so on, with new instalments arriving every seven years, all directed by Apted. 63 Up was released in 2019.

The films are a serial portrait of a group of ordinary people, observing them as they advance through life, from childhood through adulthood, and charting their different paths, changing perspectives and various fates (one participant, Lynn Johnson, died in 2013).

While revisiting Up periodically across six decades, Apted worked in television and commercial film.

Fictional drama Agatha (1979) about novelist Agatha Christie starred Vanessa Redgrave in the title role.

Apted had particular success in the 1980s, beginning in 1980 with Coal Miner's Daughter about country singer Loretta Lynn, played by Sissy Spacek, who won the Best Actress Oscar. The next year, he directed the John Belushi-Blair Brown comedy Continental Divide (1981); two years later came the crime drama Gorky Park (1983), based on the Martin Cruz Smith novel, starring William Hurt.

In 1988, there was Gorillas In The Mist, the story of naturalist Dian Fossey. Its five Oscar nominations included one for Sigourney Weaver, who played Fossey.

Apted's 1990s films included Thunderheart (1992), a thriller with Val Kilmer; and the drama Nell (1994), a vehicle for Jodie Foster.

Then came his entry in the James Bond franchise - The World Is Not Enough (1999), with Pierce Brosnan as agent 007.

Apted was active in the Directors Guild of America and served as its president from 2003 to 2009.

Online biographies say he was married three times, most recently to Paige Simpson, who survives him, along with a sister, Carolyn; three children, Jim and John Apted and Lily Mellis; and four grandchildren.

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A version of this article appeared in the print edition of The Straits Times on January 11, 2021, with the headline Versatile director Michael Apted known for Up documentaries. Subscribe