John Boorman is best known for directing feature films such as Point Blank, Hell in the Pacific, Deliverance, Zardoz, Exorcist II: The Heretic, Excalibur, The Emerald Forest, Hope and Glory, The General, The Tailor of Panama and Queen and Country.
25 Facts About John Boorman
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John Boorman is credited with creating the first Academy Award screeners to promote The Emerald Forest.
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In 2004, John Boorman received the BAFTA Fellowship for lifetime achievement from the British Academy of Film and Television Arts.
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John Boorman was born in Shepperton, Middlesex, England, the son of pub landlord George John Boorman and his wife Ivy.
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John Boorman was educated at the Salesian School in Chertsey, Surrey.
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John Boorman was conscripted for military service and became a clerical instructor in the British Army.
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John Boorman did not serve in the Korean War, but once faced court-martial for "seducing a soldier from the course of his duty" by criticising the war to his trainees; this was abandoned when Boorman showed that The Times was the source of all his comments.
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John Boorman ran the newsrooms at Southern Television in Southampton and Dover before moving into television documentary filmmaking, eventually becoming head of the BBC's Bristol-based Documentary Unit.
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John Boorman achieved much greater resonance with Deliverance, depicting the ordeal of four urban men, played by Jon Voight, Burt Reynolds, Ronny Cox and Ned Beatty, who encounter danger from an unexpected quarter while whitewater-rafting through the Appalachian backwoods.
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At the beginning of the 1970s, Boorman planned to film The Lord of the Rings and corresponded about his plans with the author, JR R Tolkien.
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John Boorman was selected as director for Exorcist II: The Heretic, a move that surprised the industry given his dislike of the original film.
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John Boorman was denounced by William Peter Blatty, the author of the original novel The Exorcist, and by William Friedkin, director of the first Exorcist film.
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John Boorman later admitted that his approach to the film was a mistake.
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Excalibur, a long-held dream project of John Boorman's, is a retelling of the Arthurian legend, based on Le Morte D'Arthur.
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John Boorman cast Nicol Williamson and Helen Mirren over their protests, as the two disliked each other intensely, but John Boorman felt that their mutual antagonism would enhance their presentations0of the characters they were playing.
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John Boorman took the initiative to promote the film himself by making VHS copies available for no charge to Academy members at several Los Angeles-area video rental stores.
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When his friend David Lean died in 1991, John Boorman was announced to be taking over direction of Lean's long-planned adaptation of Nostromo, though the production collapsed.
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John Boorman won the Best Director Award at the 1998 Cannes Film Festival for The General, his biopic of Martin Cahill.
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John Boorman himself had been one of Cahill's burglary victims, having the gold record awarded for the score to Deliverance stolen from his home.
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In 2007 and 2009 he took part in a series of events and discussions as part of the Arts in Marrakech Festival along with his daughter Katrine John Boorman including an event with Kim Cattrall called 'Being Directed'.
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John Boorman was a longtime resident of Ireland and lived in Annamoe, County Wicklow, close to the Glendalough twin lakes.
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John Boorman died of ovarian cancer in 1996 at the age of 36.
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John Boorman had been married to the journalist Lionel Rotcage, the son of French singer Regine, and they had a daughter together.
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John Boorman was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire in the 1994 Birthday Honours for services to the film industry.
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John Boorman was knighted in the 2022 New Year Honours for services to film.