Deaths 2022

Deaths 2021

Deaths 2020

Deaths 2019

Deaths 2018

Deaths 2017

Deaths 2016

Deaths 2015

Deaths 2014

Deaths 2013

Deaths 2012

Deaths 2011

Deaths 2010

Deaths 2009


Full list by date of death

Michael Winner

Director

Born - 30 October 1935, Hackney, London, UK
Died - 21 January 2013

Flamboyant director, bon vivant and his own best publicist, Winner was a supremely self-confident character who made unashamedly entertainment films that often pleased the public more than the critics.. At his most inventive in the late 1960s, he later became bogged down in violent thrillers (notably the Death Wish films), and had lost his touch by the 1980s. Born to a Russian Jewish immigrant who anglicised his name from Weinstein to Winner, the embryo director started life as a teenage film critic, then, like Coppola, moved through low-budget thrillers and nudie movies to mainstream entertainment: Climb Up the Wall (1960), Some Like It Cool (1961), Play It Cool (1962), The Cool Mikado (1963), The System (1964, his first major hit), You Must Be Joking (1965) The Jokers (1967), Hannibal Brooks (1968), The Games (1969), Lawman (1970), The Nightcomers (1971), Scorpio (1972), Death Wish (1974, and two sequels), Won Ton Ton, the Dog That Saved Hollywood (1975), The Big Sleep (1978), The Wicked Lady (1983), Appointment with Death (1988), A Chorus of Disapproval (1988), Dirty Weekend (1992) and the appropriately-named Parting Shots (1998, his last). In more recent times, he became a restaurant critic. He died from the E coli virus vibrio vulnificus, which he picked up during a holiday in the West Indies.