Born Aug. 15, 1928, in London, Nicolas Roeg broke into the film business at age 19, working as a gofer in an English movie studio before becoming a camera operator and shooting second-unit photography for Lawrence of Arabia (1962). But it was with his directorial debut, Performance (1968), that Roeg boldly split with studio conventions, creating an experimental storytelling technique that played with traditional narrative forms and would influence the work of future filmmakers.

Roeg continued to hop fences in Walkabout (1971), Don't Look Now (1973) and the David Bowie cult hit The Man Who Fell to Earth (1976), before looking to his wife, actress Theresa Russell, to star in several of his subsequent films.

Roeg's later work includes the big-screen adaptation of Roald Dahl's The Witches (1990) and the features Puffball (2006) and Adina (2007).