Apted began his career in television as a trainee for six months at Granada Television in Manchester, where he worked as a researcher. One of his first projects at Granada would become his best known: the Up series, which began in 1964 as a profile of 14 seven-year-old children for the current affairs series World in Action. As a researcher and assistant to Canadian director Paul Almond, Apted was involved in selecting the children, who came from a variety of backgrounds and classes.[8] Though originally conceived as a one-off documentary, the series has become an institution. When it was suggested that they revisit the subjects at ages fourteen and twenty one, Apted accepted the offer to direct and directed every subsequent episode in the series.[8] It explores Apted's thesis that the British class system remains largely in place. It studies the participants based on the Jesuit motto "Give me a child until he is seven and I will show you the man",[9] looking at how they develop during their lives, compared to when they were seven. The series looks at the lives of these people over the years; the latest instalment, 63 Up, was produced in 2019.[10][11] It won a Peabody Award in 2012 "for its creator’s patience and its subjects' humanity."[12]
Apted used his idea from the Up series a second time in Married in America and Married in America 2. The idea was to interview nine married couples every two years over a ten-year period to tell a more complete story of their marriages.[18] In 2005, he directed the first three episodes of the TV series Rome.[19]
For his work in television, Apted won several British Academy Awards, including two Flaherty Documentary Awards for his work on 28 Up and 35 Up and a BAFTA for Best Dramatic Director for the single play Kisses at Fifty in 1974.[20]
In 1979 he directed the Hollywood-financed Agatha, featuring Vanessa Redgrave.[23] He went to the United States in 1980, where he directed Coal Miner's Daughter,[24] which received seven Academy Award nominations, winning best actress for Sissy Spacek.[25] Both Spacek and Loretta Lynn, the subject of the film, have said that they believe Apted's outsider point of view was crucial to the movie's success in securing the participation of Appalachian residents and to the avoidance of stereotypes that previously had marred portrayals of mountain culture.[26][27] In 2019, Coal Miner's Daughter was selected by the Library of Congress for preservation in the National Film Registry for being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".[28]
In addition to the Up series, Apted made other documentaries, including Bring On the Night, a feature-length concert film about the making of Sting's first solo album.[36] He directed the documentary The Long Way Home, which was released in 1989. It chronicled the UK, US and USSR adventures of Boris Grebenshchikov, the first Soviet underground musician allowed to record in the West.[37]
Before the making of Thunderheart, Apted made the documentary Incident at Oglala about Leonard Peltier. Incident at Oglala then informed Thunderheart in the casting of actors for the fiction film.[38]
In a departure from his earlier work, from 1992 to 1994, Apted ventured into China's rapidly changing popular culture. In a project backed by Trudie Styler, Apted directed Moving the Mountain, a feature documentary which probed the origins of the 1989 protests in Tiananmen Square and the consequences of the movement in the lives of several of the movement's student leaders.[40]
Apted was the collaborator and subject of the documentary: Michael Apted – Visions on Film, by artist and filmmaker Melinda Camber Porter.[42]
Theatre
In 1977, Apted directed the premiere of Strawberry Fields at the National Theatre in London.
Personal life and death
Apted's first marriage was to Jo, with whom he had two sons, Paul and Jim. Paul Apted was a sound editor who worked on movies such as The Wolverine; he died from colon cancer in 2014.[43]
He was married to screenwriter Dana Stevens for 10 years, before they divorced. They had a son, John.[44]
In 2007 Apted became a father for the fourth time, to a girl, who lives with her mother Tania Mellis.[45]
Apted married Paige Simpson, his third wife, in January 2014.[45]
Apted died at his home in Los Angeles on 7 January 2021, at the age of 79.[6][46][47]
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