Get the latest gossip
Ted Kotcheff, director of First Blood, Weekend at Bernie’s and Wake in Fright, dies aged 94
Prolific Canadian director also made one of the country’s first internationally successful films, The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz, starring Richard Dreyfuss
In an amazingly varied career, Kotcheff’s work ranged from hardhitting TV plays and low-budget features in the UK, to hit Hollywood comedies and prestige-laden award-winners and cult films. After earning a degree in Ebglish literature from Toronto University, Kotcheff joined a fledgling CBC in the early 1950s, part of a remarkable generation that included Norman Jewison, Arthur Hiller, Sidney J Furie and Alvin Rakoff. Kotcheff continued to work in TV, directing Ingrid Bergman in an adaptation of Jean Cocteau’s La Voix Humaine in 1967, and achieving perhaps his high point with a contribution to Play for Today in 1971, starring Patricia Hayes as a homeless alcoholic in Edna the Inebriate Woman.
Or read this on The Guardian
