Boorman, John (1933-…), a British film director and producer, won critical acclaim for his work both in the United Kingdom and the United States. He also made films in South America and Ireland. He proved equally effective directing both adventure movies and romantic dramas. Boorman won acclaim for directing the taut thrillerDeliverance (1972) and Hope and Glory (1987), a nostalgic re-creation of Boorman’s own wartime childhood.
Boorman became an assistant television director in 1955, working for the English regional commercial television company, Southern Television. From 1950 to 1954, Boorman was a film critic for British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) Radio and for the Manchester Guardian newspaper. From 1960 to 1964, he was the BBC’s head of documentaries. His work with the documentary unit provided a springboard for his move into cinema, and in 1965 he made his first feature film, Catch Us If You Can, starring a British pop group, the Dave Clark Five. The film highlighted Boorman’s interest in human values and showed how they are inevitably compromised by commercialism.
Boorman’s next film was a gripping thriller made in the United States called Point Blank (1967). That was followed by Hell in the Pacific (1968), a World War II (1939-1945) drama that showed how a U.S. pilot and a Japanese naval officer, stranded on an island, shared the same values despite being enemies. Boorman’s film Excalibur (1981) was based on legends about King Arthur. Boorman’s other films include the science-fiction tale Zardoz (1974); The Emerald Forest (1985), about tribal life in the jungles of Brazil; the action movie Beyond Rangoon (1995); and A Simple Plan (1997), a drama about greed. Boorman wrote Money into Light (1985), a diary of his work on The Emerald Forest. The book is a revealing account of the compromises and constraints that attend international filmmaking.
Boorman was born on Jan. 18, 1933, in Shepperton, Surrey, England.
