Biography

Gavin Millar

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Gavin Millar was born in Clydebank, Scotland, to a working class family. The family moved to England when he was nine years old. After school and national service in the Royal Air Force, he studied English at Oxford University. His notable early work as a director was for the BBC in the 1960s. He also went on to direct for commercial television, including Dennis Potter's Cream in My Coffee (1980) for London Weekend Television and John le Carré's A Murder of Quality (1991) for Thames Television. Although mainly known for television, he has directed films such as Dreamchild (1985) (again by Potter) and Iain Banks' raunchy Complicity (2000).
- IMDb mini biography by: Anonymous

Before becoming a director, he was a well-known film critic (notably for the magazines "Sight And Sound" and "The Listener") and presented the BBC-TV film program "Film Night" for several years until the late 1970s.

[after quoting part of Charles Higham's book, "The Films Of Orson Welles", 1970]: It is hard to find, even in this book, a paragraph which so unhappily combines pomposity, complacency and meaninglessness.
[comparing Francois Truffaut and Alfred Hitchcock]: In any universe neatly controlled by the proper processes of logic, Truffaut would have nothing to do with Hitchcock. How could the spiritual son of Jean Renoir, warm, lyrical, contented, expansive son of the painter himself, who never planned a shot till the moment was on him, and who was open to everyone's suggestions, possibly have any sympathy for the master of solitary pre-planning? The fact is, of course, he does; and we must therefore think again.
I was lucky to get into the BBC at the time BBC2 was opening up. The atmosphere was much freer. You could do daft things without being hauled in front of three accountants. It was a much more experimental time.
I get lots of television work and get very good television drama offers and I am grateful for that. It's just that sometimes you spend so long trying to set up a feature film. You work on it for three or four years and then you go to the States and you pitch it for two or three months. You think you have got a cast together, you think you have got the locations, and then the money disappears at the last minute. That is depressing and demoralizing. It happens to everybody. I have had my bellyful of it, to be honest.

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