John Schlesinger

John Richard Schlesinger was an English film, television and theatre director and actor, born in London on 16 February 1926 and died on 25 July 2003. He emerged in the early 1960s as a leading light of the British New Wave before embarking on a successful career in Hollywood. He started his career making the British kitchen sink dramas A Kind of Loving (1962) and Billy Liar (1963) and the Thomas Hardy adaptation Far from the Madding Crowd (1967), and he won the Academy Award for Best Director for Midnight Cowboy (1969).