The Hungarian-born filmmaker behind 'The Ruling Class', 'The Changeling' and 'Romeo Is Bleeding' died in Los Angeles on Tuesday, his family announced, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
Peter Medak, the Hungarian-born director of The Ruling Class, The Changeling and Romeo Is Bleeding, died on Tuesday in Los Angeles at the age of 88, his family announced, according to The Hollywood Reporter. Born in Budapest on 23 December 1937, Medak fled to England in 1956 during the Hungarian uprising against communist rule. With help from an aunt who was an opera singer, he found work at the Associated British Picture Corporation and began as an editor, cameraman and assistant director before moving into directing for television.
His first feature was Negatives (1968), with Glenda Jackson, followed by A Day in the Death of Joe Egg and The Ruling Class, both released in 1972. The Ruling Class, in which Peter O'Toole played a nobleman who believes he is Jesus Christ and later Jack the Ripper, played in competition at Cannes and brought O'Toole an Oscar nomination. The Changeling (1980), a ghost story starring George C. Scott, became a genre landmark; Medak recalled that Martin Scorsese, Steven Spielberg, Guillermo del Toro and Alejandro Amenábar admired it. He later directed The Krays, Let Him Have It and Romeo Is Bleeding, with Gary Oldman, as well as episodes of Homicide: Life on the Street, Breaking Bad and The Wire, and early music videos for Peter Gabriel and Pink Floyd.
His career also had setbacks. Ghost in the Noonday Sun (1974), a pirate comedy with Peter Sellers, was never released theatrically by Columbia Pictures, and Medak described the shoot as the biggest nightmare of his life; he revisited it in the 2018 documentary The Ghost of Peter Sellers. He told interviewers that directing never stops once it is in your blood. Medak is survived by his children Christopher, Joshua, Karen and Cornelia and by his grandchildren. This account relies on the Hollywood Reporter obituary and the family's announcement reported there.
