- Born
- Birth nameKenneth Loach
- Unlike virtually all his contemporaries, Ken Loach has never succumbed to the siren call of Hollywood, and it's virtually impossible to imagine his particular brand of British socialist realism translating well to that context.
After studying law at St. Peter's College, Oxford, he branched out into the theater, performing with a touring repertory company. This led to television, where in alliance with producer Tony Garnett he produced a series of docudramas, most notably the devastating "Cathy Come Home" episode of The Wednesday Play (1964), whose impact was so massive that it led directly to a change in the homeless laws.
He made his feature debut Poor Cow (1967) the following year, and with Kes (1969), he produced what is now acclaimed as one of the finest films ever made in Britain. However, the following two decades saw his career in the doldrums with his films poorly distributed (despite the obvious quality of work such as The Gamekeeper (1968) and Looks and Smiles (1981)) and his TV work in some cases never broadcast (most notoriously, his documentaries on the 1984 miners' strike).
He made a spectacular comeback in the 1990s, with a series of award-winning films firmly establishing him in the pantheon of great European directors - his films have always been more popular in mainland Europe than in his native country or the US (where Riff-Raff (1991) was shown with subtitles because of the wide range of dialects). Hidden Agenda (1990) won the Special Jury Prize at the 1990 Cannes Film Festival; Riff-Raff (1991) won the Felix award for Best European Film of 1992; Raining Stones (1993) won the Cannes Special Jury Prize for 1993, and Land and Freedom (1995) won the FIPRESCI International Critics Prize and the Ecumenical Jury Prize at the 1995 Cannes Film Festival - and was a substantial box-office hit in Spain where it sparked intense debate about its subject matter. This needless to say, was one of the reasons that Loach made the film!- IMDb mini biography by: Michael Brooke <michael@everyman.demon.co.uk>
- SpouseLesley Ashton(July 17, 1962 - present) (5 children)
- ChildrenNicholas Loach
- Naturalistic, social realist directing style
- Improvisation, to create a genuine interplay between actors
- In many of his films a three legged dog is seen.
- Films often focus on the british working class
- Actors speaking in their native accent at all times and not imitating another accent. Loach has said that use of subtitles is preferable to asking actors to change their speech.
- He paid part of the $150,000 needed for Julian Assange's bail.
- He declined the O.B.E. (Officer of the Order of the British Empire) for his services to film in 1977.
- Twice winner of the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival for The Wind that Shakes the Barley (2006) and I, Daniel Blake (2016). The other directors to have won the Palme twice are: Bille August, Emir Kusturica, Shôhei Imamura, Michael Haneke, Jean-Pierre Dardenne & Luc Dardenne, Alf Sjöberg, Ruben Östlund and Francis Ford Coppola.
- In the series "The Film That Changed My Life" (Observer newspaper UK/May 2010), Loach cited Vittorio De Sica's Bicycle Thieves (1948) (Bicycle Thieves) as the movie that most inspired him to pursue a career in filmmaking.
- He condemned the detention of Jafar Panahi, arrested on 1 March 2010 along with Mohammad Rasoulof and Mehdi Pourmoussa. "It is a very shocking development and further demonstration of the intolerance of the regime. I hope all people working in films will call for his release, and speak out in solidarity for him and all Iranian filmmakers working under similar conditions. It is completely unacceptable." Pourmoussa and Rasoulof were released from the Evin prison on 17 March 2010, but Panahi remains in ward 209.
- I turned down the OBE because it's not a club you want to join when you look at the villains who've got it. It's all the things I think are despicable: patronage, deferring to the monarchy and the name of the British Empire, which is a monument of exploitation and conquest.
- Stalin has caused Socialism greater damage than anyone else.
- Why do they say I hate my country? And what does that even mean? Am I supposed to hate my town, am I supposed to hate all English people, or my government? And if I do hate my government, does that mean I hate my country? It's a democratic duty to criticize the government.
- A movie isn't a political movement, a party or even an article. It's just a film. At best it can add its voice to public outrage.
- I think our TV news editors are still sometimes using the language of government propaganda. We still hear the term 'war on terror' for an illegal war. We're still hearing the words reform and modernization when what we really mean is privatization and public greed.
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