Fan, filmmaker and star-struck celebrity: An interview with Michael Winner

Orson Welles, Sophia Loren, Marlon Brando, Lauren Bacall, Michael Caine, John Gielgud and Ben Kingsley: whilst this list offers a roll-call for some of the most famous film stars of the Twentieth Century, it also represents just a small fraction of the high-profile actors with whom director and producer Michael Winner worked throughout his long career in cinema. At the time of his death in January 2013, Winner was arguably best-known to Britain as a public personality and a television star in his own right. However, it was his life-long adoration of the icons of the big screen which proved to be the enduring motivating force behind his work as a filmmaker. The following interview with the late Michael Winner aims to shed further light on the disparate facets of the director’s personality: as public persona, filmmaker and film fan, with his intense attraction to the world of celebrity revealed as the central cohesive characteristic.