Ken Russell

The 1970s
Women in Love was tame compared with what Russell would serve up for the rest of the 1970s, the decade when he really developed his overblown style. The Devils was only the start of it.

Tommy (1975), the Who's rock opera, is both great and awful, and it was a massive success. Many of its actors are now too embarrassed to mention it.

Altered States (1980) is the stoner's favourite — where a Harvard scientist (William Hurt in his debut) uses an isolation tank to hallucinate back to before he was born. The famous, weird psychedelic sequences are the highlight, but the film is also notable for being Drew Barrymore's film debut at age five.

Crimes of Passion (1984) was Russell's comeback, starring Kathleen Turner as a fashion designer by day who inexplicably becomes a prostitute called China Blue by night and meets Anthony Perkins. This was Russell's last Hollywood film and he returned to lower-key European projects.

Music films
The Debussy Film (1965) gave the early clues about Russell's love of artistic excess. The starting sequence shows a woman being shot with arrows at point blank range — right on the limit of what was considered acceptable for a BBC docudrama.

Dance of the Seven Veils (1970) had Richard Strauss sitting down to a picnic with Hitler. Strauss's family took out an injunction to prevent Russell using Strauss's music in the soundtrack.

Celebrity Big Brother
Early in 2007 Russell surfaced on the reality TV show but only lasted four days before arguing with Jade Goody and her mother Jackiey and walking out.

Interviewed afterwards, he called them "terrorists" and told Dermot O'Leary that Jackiey "should be in care" and is "obviously brain-damaged" after she said she had been dead for nine hours after a motorbike accident.

Profile for More4 by Simon Smythe.

Last updated June 2007

Full filmography on the C4 Film site