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

(Sir) Alan Parker

Director

Born - 14 February 1944, Islington, London, England
Died - 31 July 2020

Round-faced, bespectacled, flop-haired, genial English director who worked with a number of styles, subjects and genres; his films tended to be either pulsing with energy, or were punishing, harrowing affairs, but he had special success with films concerning children or young people. Even as a writer, his first screen credit was on the school romance Melody(1971), recently much on British TV, while his TV debut as director saw him working with children again in The Evacuees (1974), a lovely evocation of wartime childhood. But it was his first film, Bugsy Malone (1976), a Prohibition musical with children as gangsters firing 'splurge guns' that shot him to fame. It helped that a young Jodie Foster was one of the stars. With the odd exception, his subsequent films dealt with much darker, sometimes controversial subjects: Midnight Express (1978), Fame (1980), Shoot the Moon (1981), Birdy (1984), Angel Heart (1987), Mississippi Burning (1988), Come See the Paradise (1990), The Commitments (1991), The Road to Wellville (1994), Evita (1996), Angela's Ashes (1999) and The Life of David Gale (2003), his last. When financing for a new film in 2005 fell through, he abandoned cinema and concentrated on a new passion - painting. He was divorced from his wife of 26 years, Annie, by whom he had four children, and later married his ofttime producer, Lisa Moran, who survives him. Also a humorous cartoonist, who published several volumes of his work, and twice nominated for an Oscar, he died 'after a lengthy illness'.