Michael James Radford (born 24 February 1946) is an English film director and screenwriter. He began his career as a documentary director and television comedy writer before transitioning into features in the early 1980s.
His best-known credits include the 1984 film adaptation of George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four starring John Hurt and Richard Burton (in his final role), the Shakespeare adaptation The Merchant of Venice, the true crime drama White Mischief, and the 1994 Italian-language comedy drama Il Postino: The Postman, for which he won the BAFTA Awards for Best Direction and Best Film Not in the English Language, and earned Academy Award nominations for Best Director and Best Adapted Screenplay.
Early life and career
Radford was born on 24 February 1946, in New Delhi, India, to a British father and an Austrian Jewish mother. He was educated at Bedford School before attending Worcester College, Oxford. After teaching for a few years, he went to the National Film and Television School, becoming a student there in its inaugural year.
Between 1976 and 1982, Radford worked as a documentary film maker, mostly on projects for the BBC, covering subjects such as Scottish islanders on the Isle of Lewis in the Outer Hebrides who believe in the literal truth of the Bible: The Last Stronghold of the Pure Gospel; the soprano Isobel Buchanan: La Belle Isobel; the singer songwriter Van Morrison: Van Morrison in Ireland; and the self-explanatory The Making of The Pirates of Penzance. On the last two of these, Radford worked with the cinematographer Roger Deakins, who would later shoot two of Radford's feature films; Nineteen Eighty-Four and White Mischief. Another notable early work was Another Time, Another Place (1983), a feature film set in Scotland during World War II and centred on a love story between a local woman and an Italian POW.
Career
Radford came to international attention with Nineteen Eighty-Four, his adaptation of George Orwell's novel 1984, starring John Hurt as Winston Smith, and in which Richard Burton gave his final film performance. The film was made in the time and place (London, April–June 1984) at which the book was set.
Radford's next film, released in 1987, was White Mischief, a period drama set in Kenya during the 1940s.
Filmography
Film
{| class="wikitable"
! Year
! Title
!Director
!Writer
! Notes
|-
|1973
|Concerning the Surface
|
|
| rowspan="2" |NFTS student film
|-
|1974
|Cold Night
|
|
|-
| 1983
|Another Time, Another Place
|
|
|Taormina Golden Charybdis<br>Nominated – David di Donatello for Best Foreign Film
|-
|1984
|Nineteen Eighty-Four
|
|
|Evening Standard British Film Award for Best Film<br>Istanbul Golden Tulip<br>Nominated – Fantasporto International Fantasy Film Award
|-
|1987
|White Mischief
|
|
|
|-
|1994
|Il Postino: The Postman
|
|
|BAFTA Award for Best Film Not in the English Language<br>BAFTA Award for Best Direction<br>Nominated – Academy Award for Best Director<br>Nominated – Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay<br>Nominated – BAFTA Award for Best Adapted Screenplay<br>Nominated – Directors Guild of America Award for Outstanding Directing – Feature Film
|-
|1998
|B. Monkey
|
|
|Replaced Michael Caton-Jones
|-
|2000
|Dancing at the Blue Iguana
|
|
|
|-
|2002
|Ten Minutes Older: The Cello
|
|
| Segment: "Addicted to the Stars"
|-
|2004
|The Merchant of Venice
|
|
|Nominated – David di Donatello for Best European Film
|-
|2007
|Flawless
|
|
|
|-
|2013
|The Mule
|
|
| Radford walked away and cut ties with the film in the wake of a litigation over its finances,<br>renouncing to any credit in the cut released in 2013
|-
|2014
|Elsa & Fred
|
|
|
|-
|2017
|The Music of Silence
|
|
|
|}
Documentary film
{| class="wikitable"
! Year
! Title
!Director
!Writer
! Notes
|-
|1976
|Sugar
|
|
|
|-
|1978
|Mountain Days
|
|
|
|-
|1981
|Van Morrison in Ireland
|
|
|
|-
|1982
|The Making of 'The Pirates of Penzance
|
|
|
|-
|2011
|Michel Petrucciani
|
|
|Nominated – César Award for Best Documentary Film
|}
Television
{| class="wikitable"
! Year
! Title
!Director
!Writer
! Notes
|-
| rowspan="2" |1979
|Everyman
|
|
|Episodes: "The Last Stronghold of the Pure Gospel" & "La Belle Isobel"
|-
|Scotch and Wry
|
|
|3 episodes
|-
|1976–77
|Omnibus
|
|
|Episodes: "Unita" & "The Madonna and the Volcano"
|-
|1980
|The Two Ronnies
|
|
|3 episodes
|-
| rowspan="2" |1981
|A Kick Up the Eighties
|
|
|5 episodes
|-
|Three of a Kind
|
|
|3 episodes