Philip Saville

Philip Saville (born Philip Saffer; 28 October 1927 – 22 December 2016) was an English television and film director, screenwriter and actor whose career lasted half a century.

His work included 45 contributions to Armchair Theatre (1956–72), and he won two BAFTA Awards for Best Drama Series, for Boys from the Blackstuff (1982) and The Life and Loves of a She-Devil (1986). The British Film Institute's Screenonline website described Saville as "one of Britain's most prolific and pioneering television and film directors".

Early life Saville was born Philip Saffer on 28 October 1927 at Marylebone, London (in later life he gave his birth year as 1930, a date repeated in all his obituaries), son of Louis Saffer (who later assumed the anglicized form of the family name, "Saville", chosen by his father, Joseph Saffer, a master tailor), a travelling salesman for a clothing company, and Sadie Kathleen (known as "Kay"), née Tanenberg, supervisor of Fortnum & Mason's women's fashion department at Piccadilly.

He studied science at London University and trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA). His National Service in the Royal Corps of Signals was ended by his discharge after he sustained a serious knee injury involving an armoured vehicle.

Saville also directed Madhouse on Castle Street (1963) for the BBC, an example "of his interest in psychological states and subjective viewpoints", according to Oliver Wake. He also worked on an episode of Out of the Unknown, a version of the E.M. Forster short story "The Machine Stops" (1966) in this period.

Later career Saville's significant later work includes Gangsters (1975), Boys from the Blackstuff (1982) and The Life and Loves of a She-Devil (1986), which both won BAFTAs for Best Drama Series. Saville's documentary on Harold Pinter Pinter's Progress (2009) for Sundance international television channels and UK's Sky Arts features numerous interviews with associates of the Nobel Prize–winning playwright.

Personal life Saville was married to the actress, film and theatre director Jane Arden from 1947. The couple had two sons, but separated in the mid-1960s without divorcing. Jane Arden committed suicide in 1982. Saville had an affair with actress and leading British pop artist Pauline Boty whom he met during her student days and who later worked for him and with whom he had a daughter. The affair is said to have inspired the film Darling. He also had an eight-year relationship with actress Diana Rigg during the same period.

From the 1960s he lived in the former home of the artist Augustus John in St John's Wood, London. In 1987 Philip Saville married his second wife, Nina Francis (née Zuckerman) and they had a son together. 2003 The Gospel of John (director)