07 October 2023 , 16:40
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Terence Davies has died aged 77 following a “short illness”, his manager has announced this evening.
The British screenwriter and film director established himself on the cinematic map in the late 1970s and early 1980s with his trilogy of autobiographical films titled Children, Madonna And Child, Death And Transfiguration – and went on to make nine more feature films. Most recently, Slow Horses star Jack Lowden and Doctor Who’s Peter Capaldi led his Netflix drama Benediction, based on the life of English poet Siegfried Sassoon, also starring late actor Julian Sands.
Manager John Taylor said in a statement given to the PA news agency: “I am deeply saddened to announce the death of Terence Davies, who died peacefully at home in his sleep after a short illness on Saturday October 7 2023.” The statement added the Latin words “Umbra Sumus”, from poet Horace, and an extract from British writer Christina Rossetti’s poem titled When I Am Dead, My Dearest – both of which had significance to Davies.
Terence Davies speaking alongside Sex and the City star Cynthia Nixon at the 2016 New York film festival (Getty Images)"I am heartbroken beyond words to hear that Terence Davies, my favourite filmmaker, passed away this morning. I don’t even know what to say. This is devastating news," one fan of the late director penned on Twitter (aka X) as news of Terence's death broke this evening.
Another shared their memories of the British star as they paid tribute online, penning: "heartbroken by the death of Terence Davies, one of the most sensitive & transcendent of all modern filmmakers. a singularly vulnerable interview subject, a delightfully gossipy dinner companion, and a poet who framed his own anguish so beautifully that it felt like rapture. RIP."
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"Terence Davies captured something true and universal about life as it was lived in places like Liverpool. It was already disappearing when I was a kid but I could recognise it. He made it poetic. RIP," one fan mused on Twitter, with another thoughtful reflection on Terence's work reading: "No one could capture how the past bleeds into our present as he could. Nobody could pinpoint where queer desire and shame intermingle so candidly, how faith can be the path to absolution and hell on earth. No words can describe what cinema lost today."
Born in Terence, Davies worked as a clerk in a shipping office and a book-keeper in an accountancy firm for 10 years before enrolling at the Coventry Drama school in 1973. In 1988, the filmmaker won the Cannes International Critics Prize for Distant Voices, Still Lives – a film drawn from his own family memories of a working class life in 1940s and 1950s Liverpool.
A host of famous faces have also starred in his films, including Sex Education star Gillian Anderson – who played socialite Lily Bart in Terence’s 2000 adaptation of Edith Wharton’s The House Of Mirth. While Oscar-winner Rachel Weisz played Hester Collyer in Davies’ 2011 adaption of Terence Rattigan’s 1952 play The Deep Blue Sea, about a forbidden love and the fear of loneliness.
British model and actress Agyness Deyn played Chris Guthrie in his 2015 adaption of Lewis Grassic Gibbon’s Sunset Song, about her journey from schoolgirl to womanhood, and motherhood to widowhood – set after the first World War. And in 2016, Sex And The City star Cynthia Nixon played 19th century poet Emily Dickinson in A Quiet Passion, written and directed by Davies.