Biography

Terence Davies

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Terence Davies was born on November 10, 1945 in Liverpool, England, UK. He was a writer and director, known for Distant Voices, Still Lives (1988), The House of Mirth (2000) and Benediction (2021). He died on October 7, 2023 in Mistley, Essex, England, UK.

Was once an accountant.
Listed Great Expectations (1946), The Happiest Days of Your Life (1950), Kind Hearts and Coronets (1949), Letter from an Unknown Woman (1948), The Magnificent Ambersons (1942), The Night of the Hunter (1955), The Searchers (1956), Singin' in the Rain (1951), Victim (1961), and Young at Heart (1954) as the 10 Greatest Films of All Time in the 2012 Sight & Sound Directors' Poll.
He was made a Fellow of the British Film Institute in recognition of his outstanding contribution to film culture.
In an interview in 2022 he said that he preferred to live alone and had been single for much of his life, except for a heterosexual relationship in the late 1970s, " when there was still this attitude of: 'Well, find the right person and you'll be happy'"; he was subsequently uninterested in relationships with men, saying "I did go on to the gay scene for a couple of months and I thought, it's just not for me".
Full retrospective at the 8th New Horizons Film Festival (2008).

Work is my raison d'etre and if that's taken away you become a non-person. You're just filling in time till you die.
I don't like being gay. It has ruined my life. I am celibate, although I think I would have been celibate even if I was straight because I'm not good-looking; why would anyone be interested in me? And nobody has been. Work was my substitute.
There's only one thing more embarrassing than an actor with a gun: a British actor with a gun. Ridiculous.
All my films, up to and including The House of Mirth (2000), were made with very small budgets and modest intentions. We all started out at the BFI. There was me, Bill Douglas, Derek Jarman, Sally Potter, Peter Greenaway. It was all modest, but all those people had a voice in a way that people haven't today.
Who says there has to be a climax on page six? Why? Film people in the UK think we should imitate America and we've always done that badly. You're not welcome here if you want to make cinema that is art, that should be interpreted by an audience, using their own minds.

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