British director Ken Russell dies at 84

Ken Russell, an iconoclastic British director whose daring films blended music, sex and violence in a potent brew seemingly drawn straight from his subconscious, has died at age 84.

Russell died in a hospital on Sunday following a series of strokes, his son Alex Verney-Elliott said Monday.

"My father died peacefully," Verney-Elliott said. "He died with a smile on his face."

Russell was a fiercely original director whose vision occasionally brought mainstream success, but often tested the patience of audiences and critics. He had one of his biggest hits in 1969 with Women in Love, based on the book by D.H. Lawrence, which earned Academy Award nominations for the director and for writer Larry Kramer, and a Best Actress Oscar for the star, Glenda Jackson.

It included one of the decade's most famous scenes -- a nude wrestling bout between Alan Bates and Oliver Reed. Reed said at the time that the director was "starting to go crazy."

Music played a central role in many of Russell's films, including The Music Lovers in 1970 -- about Tchaikovsky -- and 1975's Lisztomania, which starred Roger Daltrey of the Who as 19th-century heart-throb Franz Liszt.

The Boy Friend, a 1971 homage to 1930s Hollywood musicals starring supermodel Twiggy, and Russell's 1975 adaptation of the Who's psychedelic rock opera Tommy, were musicals of a different sort, both marked by the director's characteristic visual excess.

The Devils, a 1971 film starring Vanessa Redgrave as a 17th-century nun in the grip of demonic possession, was heavily cut for its U.S. release and is due to be released on DVD in Britain for the first time in 2012.

Russell's fascination with changing mental states surfaced in the 1980 film Altered States, a rare Hollywood foray for him, starring William Hurt as a scientist experimenting with hallucinogens. It was poorly received.

Married four times, Russell is survived by his wife Elise Tribble and his children.

Funeral details were not immediately announced.


[Via The Associated Press]