Film director whose fragmented style bewitched and bewildered his audiences.
His early experience as a cinematographer brought a stunning visual quality to his work.He often exasperated the critics and gained a reputation as being hard on his actors. And he took a delight in jumbling scenes and time to both bewitch and bewilder his audiences.
Nicolas Roeg was born in St John’s Wood in north London on 15 August 1928. His father Jack, who was of Dutch ancestry, worked in the diamond trade but lost a lot of money when his investments failed in South Africa.
The first film he remembered seeing as a child was Babes in Toyland, starring Laurel and Hardy.
Roeg did his National Service after World War Two before getting a job making tea and operating the clapper board at Marylebone Studios, where he worked on a number of minor films.
By the dawn of the 1960s he had progressed to camera operator, notably on The Trials of Oscar Wilde and Fred Zinnemann’s film The Sundowners.
He was part of the second unit on David Lean’s Lawrence of Arabia. Lean later sacked him as director of photography on Doctor Zhivago after the two constantly quarrelled.
Many of the stunning scenes that won the latter film an Oscar were shot by Roeg but he was not credited.
His breakthrough came in 1964 when he worked as a cinematographer on Roger Corman’s film The Masque of the Red Death, an adaptation of the Edgar Allan Poe short story, starring Vincent Price.
Corman was gaining a reputation for spotting and developing new talent and boosted the careers of other future directors including James Cameron and Martin Scorsese.
