Film director Michael Winner dead at 77

FILM director and restaurant critic Michael Winner has died, his wife Geraldine said today. He was 77.

Mr Winner, who made more than 30 films including the blockbuster Death Wish series, had been ill for some time and died today at his home in Kensington, London, where he was being nursed by his wife.

Paying tribute to her husband Mrs Winner, a former dancer who he married two years ago, said in a statement: “Michael was a wonderful man, brilliant, funny and generous.

“A light has gone out in my life.”

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In a film career which spanned more than 50 years, he worked with some of the biggest stars in Hollywood, including Marlon Brando, Robert Mitchum and Faye Dunaway.

He later reinvented himself as a restaurant critic, writing about food in his typically flamboyant style in his Winner’s Dinners column for the Sunday Times.

Winner, whose appearance in adverts for motor insurance coined the catchphrase “Calm down dear, it’s only a commercial”, also founded and funded the Police Memorial Trust following the murder of WPC Yvonne Fletcher outside the Libyan embassy in London in 1984.

More than 50 officers have been honoured by the trust at sites across the country.

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Winner, a highly successful British film director, was a flamboyant, larger-than-life character who could never be accused of being a shrinking violet.

He was a multi-millionaire, totally unashamed of his wealth, and a man who revelled in expensive holidays - only too happy to be photographed romping on tropical beaches with bikini-clad ladies less than half his age.

Winner was a cigar-chomping bon viveur, who occasionally delighted in pricking the pompous with a few acerbic comments. He developed into an argumentative and often infuriating newspaper columnist, as well as an uncompromising restaurant critic.

Nor was he a man who could be ignored - Winner made sure of that himself.

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His very flamboyance often tended to disguise his skill as a film director. His films were usually violent and invariably controversial and sometimes said to be in bad taste, particularly his most famous offerings, the Death Wish series.

The films were usually attacked by the critics but, far more importantly for him, they attracted filmgoers in their thousands.

Michael Robert Winner was born on October 30 1935, the only child of a couple of Russian emigre stock. His father was a millionaire property developer and his mother, as colourful a character as himself, was an inveterate gambler who lost millions in the casinos in Cannes.

At the age of 13, the young Winner was already showing an entrepreneurial streak. He started to write a showbusiness column called Michael Winner’s Show Talk, syndicated to 35 local papers.

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He attended St Christopher’s School, Letchworth, and was asked to leave because he was paying another boy to clean his room.

He avoided National Service by pretending to be homosexual, and was immediately classed as “unfit for military service”.

Winner went to Downing College, Cambridge, where he read economics and law, and joined the BBC during a college vacation with the job of knocking on stars’ doors to tell them the director was waiting.

He later said of that period: “Fortunately the BBC turned me down for the producers’ course, otherwise I’d still be there making art films about socialists in Woking.”

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Whatever his abilities as a film director, Winner’s great skill was as a publicity manipulator - he was always able to make headlines.

Indeed, just before he went into hospital for triple heart bypass surgery in 1993, he was making headlines because of his involvement with the opposite sex.

Former girlfriends Catherine Neilson and Jenny Seagrove were more than two decades his junior. Winner was accused of engineering the split with Seagrove to achieve maximum publicity for his latest film.

However true that was, there was no doubt he knew how to hold media attention - and his romantic liaisons did have a habit of hitting the headlines just as a new film was released.

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When Appointment With Death came out in 1988, he admitted he had found love on the set with his then leading lady, Seagrove. He serenaded her on her 30th birthday with a 10-piece band playing Happy Birthday, he revealed coyly.

For A Chorus Of Disapproval the following year, “private” pictures of her dressed in skimpy underwear for her role as a nymphomaniac mysteriously vanished from his home and appeared in newspapers. There were no complaints from Winner.

He also made headlines when Bullseye came out in 1990 (this was an unusual Winner film because it was a comedy rather than a vigilante piece, starring Michael Caine and Roger Moore). Winner made news once again when he spotted two old ladies being mugged while out jogging and gave chase. Mysteriously, the muggers got away.

But he was best known for his Death Wish films. When he offered Charles Bronson the lead role about a hero who kills citizens, Bronson said: “Oh, I’d like to do that.”

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“Play the role?” asked Winner. “No, shoot muggers,” said Bronson.

He insisted on casting Julie Christie in West 11, a thriller set in bedsitterland with Diana Dors in 1963, against the producer’s advice. It won her an Oscar.

He also worked with Orson Welles and Oliver Reed on I’ll Never Forget What’s ‘is Name and again with Reed on Hannibal Brooks. In all, he made more than 30 films, becoming one of the most successful British directors of his generation.

The films were not exactly art - but they made Winner a fortune and helped him collect paintings. His hobbies included art collection (he had a Canaletto), antiques and book illustrations.

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He prided himself on his knack with women, and despite his six-year relationship with Seagrove, he confessed he had been unfaithful during their affair with Grange Hill actress Simone Hyams.

But Winner knew how to handle women. It involved “a certain amount of effort”, he admitted.

Back in 1970 he said: “Ideally, the average woman needs 25 hours attention a day and if she could get a bit more she’d try for that. It kills her if she hears a derogatory remark about her dress or hair.”

Winner finally gave up his bachelorhood when he became engaged to Geraldine Lynton-Edwards in 2007.

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They had known each other since 1957 when she was a 16-year-old ballet dancer and actress.

He said at the time: “I have told Geraldine that it took me 72 years to get engaged so she’s not to hold her breath for the marriage.”

But they did finally get married, in September 2011, with Michael Caine and his wife Shakira as witnesses.

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