Ken Russell, one of Britain’s most daring film-makers and hailed for his raucous 1969 adaptation of D.H. Lawrence’s novel Women in Love which won him an Oscar nomination, has died at the age of 84.
He died in hospital on Sunday following a series of strokes, according to his son , Alex Verney-Elliott.
"My father died peacefully, he died with a smile on his face," he said.
Russell’s widow, Elize, described her husband’s death as "completely unexpected" and said she was "devastated’’.
Glenda Jackson, who won an Oscar for her role in Women in Love and worked in a number of Russell's other films, said it was "just wonderful to work with him and to work with him as often as I did".
"He created the kind of climate in which actors could do their job and I loved him dearly," she told the BBC.
Ms Jackson, currently a Labour MP, said it was a ``great shame’’ that Russell had been overlooked by the British film industry in later years.
"It was almost as if he never existed - I find it utterly scandalous for someone who was so innovative and a film director of international stature," she said.
Russell established a reputation for his unconventional method of film-making and his films were known as much for their theme as his innovative style. Women in Love became controversial for a nude wrestling scene between Oliver Reed and Alan Bates.
"I managed to get them to do it by bribing them and encouraging them to enjoy themselves. Judging by the smiles of satisfaction on their faces, they had the time of their lives," he was to joke later.
His other controversial works included the religious drama The Devils and the rock opera, Tommy.
Russell’s most productive decades were the sixties and the seventies when he earned both notoriety and praise in equal measure for daring to tread where his contemporaries felt afraid to.
"He pushed the barriers completely and got away with it sometimes and didn't others, but he made some startling movies,’’ said film-maker Michael Winner recalling is contribution to cinema.
Actor Joely Richardson, who worked in Russell's 1993 BBC TV series Lady Chatterley, said: "I will forever feel privileged and honoured to have worked with the great Ken Russell.’’
By the 1990s, however, tastes had changed and he found it difficult get funding. He recalled how the BBC once returned a script with the note that it was not ``cinematic enough’’.
Russell joked how the world had changed since his heydays when he was spoken of in the same breath as the likes of Federico Fellini.
