Nicolas Roeg interview: ‘I hate the term “sex scene”’

‘Oh, some of my films have been attacked with absolute vitriol!’ said Nicolas Roeg, 85, and still one of the darkest and most innovative of post-war British directors. We were sitting in his study in Notting Hill; nearby in Powis Square is the house Roeg used for his 1968 debut, Performance, starring Mick Jagger as the rock star who entices a gangster (James Fox) into a drug-induced identity crisis. The film was shelved for a year before Warner Brothers dared to release it.

‘The critics didn’t always get it then — but they do seem to now,’ said Roeg.

Roeg was born in 1928 in St John’s Wood into a vaguely bohemian background. A lifetime’s accumulation of books, awards and framed pictures of his former wife, the actress Theresa Russell, spills into the room. Roeg, a rumpled, softly spoken man with a very English reserve, has just published a book of reflections on film, The World is Ever Changing, in which he chronicles (among other things) his ‘flawed life’ as a director.