Michael Apted
Michael Apted began working as a researcher at Granada Television and soon became established as an investigative reporter and television director of the news series World in Action, before becoming a drama director on the long running British soap Coronation Street. Among his sixty plus television credits are The Lovers and Folly Foot, which won BAFTA Awards®, and Another Sunday and Sweet FA and Kisses at Fifty, both of which won him the award as Best Dramatic director. In 1972, Apted made his directorial film debut with Triple Echo, starring Glenda Jackson and Oliver Reed, followed by the acclaimed rock and roll drama Stardust, then The Squeeze, with Stacy Keach and Agatha, starring Dustin Hoffman and Vanessa Redgrave. He later directed Coal Miner's Daughter, Loretta Lyn, Gorky Park, Bring On The Night, Gorillas in the Mist, Class Action, Thunderheart, Blink, Nell, Extreme Measures, Always Outnumbered, The World Is Not Enough, Engima and Enough. Parallel to his feature film career, Michael Apted has made documentaries that have attracted awards, as well as critical and box office success. The most notable of these is the series which began with 7 Up, following the lives of a group of 14 British schoolchildren from the age of seven, in 1963, visiting them every seven years to chart their lives. The most recent of the series, 49 Up, aired in 2005. Other documentaries include Married in America, the Rolling Stones Forty Licks Tour and The World 2006, following soccer and it's global influence leading up to the 2006 World Cup. Michael Apted is currently President of the Directors Guild of America, for a second term, and was recently awarded the International Documentary Association's highest honour, the IDA Career Achievement Award®. Michael Apted won the Feature Film award at The Hamptons International Film Festival in 2001 for Enigma