Peter Medak Dies: ‘The Ruling Class’ & ‘Romeo Is Bleeding’ Director Was 88

Peter Medak, the award-winning Hungarian-British film and television director with a career spanning six decades and credits including The Changeling starring George C. Scott, Romeo Is Bleeding with Gary Oldman and The Krays starring Martin and Gary Kemp, died Tuesday, October 27 in Los Angeles. He was 88.

His death was announced by family. Though a cause was not stated, the family noted that Medak died peacefully.

Born in Budapest, Hungary in 1937, Medak showed interest in movie-making by the time he was eight years old when his aunt gave him a 35-millimeter hand-cranked projector and a piece of film. At 13, under the Communist regime, he was banned from going to school, later saying, “my father was a so-called capitalist…he was… put away to prison for years. … I spent an awful lot of time on my own, in our apartment, because my father was in prison, my mother was working in a plastics factory, I had a brother who died. …I became an observer… you know, looking through this incredible keyhole of our apartment.”

After fleeing to England in 1956 at 18, Medak started as a trainee at Associated British-Pathe, and worked on the sets of major British productions while soon getting promoted to assistant director on films such as The Great Armored Car Swindle (1961) and The Phantom of the Opera (1962). MCA Universal Pictures quickly noticed his work and in 1963, and he was brought to Los Angeles and signed to a television-directing contract, working on the series Court Martial.

In 1967 Paramount signed him to direct his first feature, Negatives, with Glenda Jackson. His next two films were the highly acclaimed black comedies A Day in the Death of Joe Egg (1972), starring Alan Bates, and The Ruling Class (1972), with Peter O’ Toole, for which Medak was nominated for the Palme D’Or, and O’Toole was nominated for an Academy Award.

Medak earned a reputation across his six-decade career as an “actors’ director,” resulting in 27 features with such acclaimed films as The Changeling (1980) with George C. Scott; The Krays (1990); Let Him Have It (1991), and Romeo is Bleeding (1993), with Gary Oldman. His 2018 documentary The Ghost of Peter Sellers received acclaim, winning Best Documentary at the Beverly Hills Film Festival.

His prolific television directing work included of Homicide: Life on the Street, Chicago Hope, The Wire and Breaking Bad. With a deep interest in music, he directed some of the earliest music videos for artists such as Peter Gabriel and Pink Floyd, and, in the opera realm, directed La voix humaine with Julia Migenes. He staged a production of Salome in Minneapolis and Rigoletto with the Los Angeles Opera.

In a career spanning 60 years, making both cult and critically acclaimed movies, Medak directed 27 features and 59 episodes of television.

“If it’s in your blood, directing,” he said once. “You never stop directing and it doesn’t matter that you’re alone in your mind, dreaming or imagining things but you’re always making a movie.”

Medak is survived by his children Christopher, Joshua, Karen and Cornelia Medak and grandchildren Sacha, Marlowe, Ryden, Oliver and Anders.

He was previously married to Katherine La Kermance, Carolyn Seymour and Julia Migenes, and was in a relationship with Christine Wagner.