When he made his directorial debut in 1970, Nicolas Roeg was already a 23-year veteran of the British film industry, starting out in 1947 as an editing apprentice and working his way up to cinematographer twelve years later. He first came to attention as part of the second unit on David Lean’s Lawrence of Arabia in 1962. His first really distinctive solo work will take place two years later in Roger Corman’s The Masque of the Read Death. He went on to photograph films for such distinguished directors as François Truffaut (Fahrenheit 451, 1966), John Schlesinger (Far from the Madding Crowd, 1967), and Richard Lester (Petulia, 1968). His sensational directorial debut came with Performance in 1968, which he co-directed with writer and painter Donald Cammell. The film was intended to be a simple-minded star vehicle for Mick Jagger. Cockney accents, graphic violence, a sympathetic view of London’s hallucinatory drug culture and a complex narrative concerned with identity and power, proved too heady a brew for Warner Bros. executives and the release of the film was delayed for two years. Roeg went to Australia in 1971 for his solo debut as director with Walkabout, which was also his last film as cinematographer. Throughout the next decade he directed a world-class body of work with Don’t Look Now in 1973, The Man Who Fell to Earth in 1976 and Bad Timing in 1980. He was nominated for and has received numerous awards, among which: a BAFTA Film Award nomination for Far from the Madding Crowd in 1968, a BAFTA Film Award nomination as Best Director for Don’t Look Now in 1974, a Cannes Film Festival Palme d’Or nomination for Insignificance in 1985 as well as a British Independent Film Award Lifetime Achievement Award in 1999.