MARITAL STATUS
Professions Director , Actor , Executive Producer more
Nationality Canadian
Birth April 7, 1931 (Toronto – Canada)
BIOGRAPHY
Born in Toronto to Bulgarian parents, Ted Kotcheff made his directorial debut at the age of 24 after studying English literature. He was then the youngest director on the CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation). After having cut his teeth on episodes of television series, he directed his first feature film in 1962: The Beauty of the Islands with James Mason , nominated for a BAFTA for best screenplay. Three years later, during which he continued to film for the small screen, he signed Life at the top with Laurence Harvey , which is the sequel to the film Les chemins de la haute ville (1965) by Jack Clayton with Simone Signoret and Heather Sears .
After several TV films, including an adaptation of Joseph Steinbeck’s Mice and Men , and the British romance Two Gentlemen Sharing , he emigrated to Australia in 1971 to direct Wake in Fright , a waking, hallucinatory nightmare under the crushing sun of the outback. The film, which acquired a small cult status over the years, was presented in competition at the Cannes Film Festival and marked the start of his career.
However, he did not abandon television and was also interested in theater where he achieved great success with the musical Maggie May . In 1974, he directed the western A Colt for a Rope with Gregory Peck as well as the comedy The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz with Richard Dreyfuss , nominated for the Golden Globes for best foreign film and winner of the Golden Bear at the International Film Festival from Berlin.
From 1977 to 1989, Ted Kotcheff’s career, until then divided between television and cinema, turned exclusively to the big screen. During this period, he directed Jane Fonda ( Touche pas à mon turf , 1977), Jacqueline Bisset ( La Grande Cuisine , 1978), Nick Nolte ( North Dallas Forty , 1979) and Kurt Russell ( Winter People , 1989). In 1982, Rambo was released , his biggest commercial success but also one of the most emblematic characters in the filmography of Sylvester Stallone who would later play him three times.
After the crazy comedy Weekend with BernieIn 1989, Ted Kotcheff returned to his first love and almost only worked on TV films. After Stallone, it was Dolph Lundgren , another star of action films from the 1980s and 1990s, whom he directed in The Shooter in 1995. This spy thriller is his last feature film. In the 2000s, Ted Kotcheff directed seven episodes of the police series New York – Special Unit but it was mainly as executive producer that he worked on more than two hundred and fifty episodes until 2012.
