Schlesinger was born in London into a middle-class Jewish family, the son of Winifred Henrietta (née Regensburg) and Bernard Edward Schlesinger, a physician.After St Edmund’s School, Hindhead, Uppingham School and Balliol College, Oxford, he worked as an actor.
Schlesinger’s acting career began in the 1950s and consisted of supporting roles in British films such as The Divided Heart and Oh… Rosalinda!!, and British TV productions such as BBC Sunday Night Theatre, The Adventures of Robin Hood, and The Vise.
He began his directorial career in 1956 with the short documentary Sunday in the Park about London’s Hyde Park. In 1958 Schlesinger created a documentary on Benjamin Britten and the Aldeburgh Festival for the BBC’s Monitor programme, including rehearsals of the children’s opera Noye’s Fludde featuring a young Michael Crawford. In 1959 Schlesinger was credited as exterior or second unit director on 23 episodes of the TV series The Four Just Men and four 30-minute episodes of the series Danger Man.
By the 1960s, he had given up acting to concentrate on a directing career, and another of his earlier directorial efforts, the British Transport Films documentary Terminus (1961), gained a Venice Film Festival Gold Lion and a British Academy Award.
His first two fiction movies, A Kind of Loving (1962) and Billy Liar (1963) were set in the North of England. A Kind of Loving won the Golden Bear award at the 12th Berlin Film Festival in 1962.
His third feature, Darling (1965), described the modern urban way of life in London and was one of the first films about swinging London.
Schlesinger’s next film was the period drama Far From the Madding Crowd (1967), an adaptation of Thomas Hardy’s popular novel accentuated by beautiful English country locations. Both films featured Julie Christie as the female lead.
Schlesinger’s next film, Midnight Cowboy (1969), was internationally acclaimed. A story of two hustlers living on the fringe in the bad side of New York City, it was Schlesinger’s first movie shot in the U.S., and it won Oscars for Best Director and Best Picture.
During the 1970s, he made an array of movies about loners, losers, and people outside the clean world, such as Sunday Bloody Sunday (1971), The Day of the Locust (1975), Marathon Man (1976), and Yanks (1979).
After Honky Tonk Freeway (1981), he worked on films that attracted mixed responses from the critics and the public. In Britain, he did better with films like Madame Sousatzka (1988) and Cold Comfort Farm (1995). His later films include An Englishman Abroad (1983), The Falcon and the Snowman (1985), Pacific Heights (1990), the TV play A Question of Attribution (1991), The Innocent (1993) and The Next Best Thing (2000).
Schlesinger also directed Timon of Athens (1965) for the Royal Shakespeare Company and the musical I and Albert (1972) at London’s Piccadilly Theatre.
Schlesinger was made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) for his services to film in 1970..
Schlesinger underwent a quadruple heart bypass in 1998, before suffering a stroke in December 2000. He was taken off life support at Desert Regional Medical Center in Palm Springs on 24 July 24, 2003, and he died early the following day at the age of 77.
He was survived by his partner of over 30 years, photographer Michael Childers.
Filmography
- Feature and television films (as Director)
A Kind of Loving (1962)
Billy Liar (1963)
Darling (1965)
Far From the Madding Crowd (1967)
Midnight Cowboy (1969)
Sunday Bloody Sunday (1971)
The Day of the Locust (1975)
Marathon Man (1976)
Yanks (1979)
Honky Tonk Freeway (1981)
Privileged (1982)
Separate Tables (1983) (TV)
An Englishman Abroad (1983) (TV)
The Falcon and the Snowman (1985)
The Believers (1987)
Madame Sousatzka (1988)
Pacific Heights (1990)
A Question of Attribution (1991) (TV)
The Innocent (1993)
Cold Comfort Farm (1995) (TV)
Eye for an Eye (1996)
The Tale of Sweeney Todd (1998) (TV)
The Next Best Thing (2000)
Speak Your Mind