Childhood: His family were Jewish and he was brought up in Hampstead, London, with his brother Roger and his sister Hilary. His father was a paediatrician. During his childhood he made films using a 9.5 mm camera.

Education: John Schlesinger went to Uppingham school and studied English literature at Balliol College Oxford from 1947 to 1950, and while there he joined the dramatic society and along with Alan Cooke he made the films Black Legend, (1948) and The Starfish, (1950).

Work: On his 18th birthday in 1944 he followed his father into the army and expected to receive a commission in the Royal Engineers. However, on top of suffering from vertigo, he caught rheumatic fever and also broke his leg during training. He was seconded to the Combined Services Entertainment Unit where he performed as a magician. Schlesinger was sent to Singapore where his fellow entertainers included Kenneth Williams, Stanley Baxter, and the playwright Peter Nichols.
Schlesinger then began a career as a small-part actor, starting in The Alchemist with the Oxford Players. He toured with a number of plays and also took roles with Colchester Repertory Theatre. His film acting debut was in Singlehanded, (1952). In 1955 he played in Mourning Becomes Electra, directed by Peter Hall. John Schlesinger also acted in episodes of the television series Ivanhoe and Robin Hood where his director was Lindsay Anderson. During this time John Schlesinger met Noel Davis who was also acting in the theatre, but was later to be the casting director for several of John Schlesinger's feature films, starting with Yanks, (1979).
He worked at the BBC (1956-61) directing documentaries for the Tonight and Monitor series. For Monitor he directed longer pieces including features on the Cannes film festival, a portrait of Georges Simenon, (1959), Benjamin Britten at Aldeburgh, (1959), Italian opera, (1960), and a study of four young painters, Private View, (1960). He made his name as director when he was given the 30-minute Terminus, (1961), to make. This gave him the Gold Lion award at the Venice film festival and a British Academy Award.
He directed his first feature film A Kind of Loving in 1962, and it won the Golden Bear at the Berlin Film Festival. This was seen as part of the realist movement in British cinema that included Lindsay Anderson, Tony Richardson, and Karel Reisz.
Schlesinger won an Academy Award for his first US film Midnight Cowboy, 1969. It was nominated for seven awards and it was the first X-rated film to win the Academy Award for best picture. With its coy attitude to homosexuality it soon became dated, but at the time it struck a chord with the general audience. In Sunday, Bloody Sunday, (1971), the treatment of homosexuality was more explicit. John Schlesinger regarded the story as a personal statement and his own coming out publicly as gay.
Schlesinger was appointed a CBE in 1970. In the 1970s and 1980s his reputation suffered from both film and theatrical flops. It was the huge success of the film Marathon Man, (1976), that allowed him to keep some of his international reputation in tact.
He moved into television and took on another gay theme in The Englishman Abroad, (1983), which represented part of the life of Guy Burgess. His A Question of Attribution, (1992), was a television play by Alan Bennett which portrayed Anthony Blunt. Schlesinger was interviewed in the film The Celluloid Closet, (1995).

Friends & Relationships: In 1966 John Schlesinger began a lifelong relationship with the photographer Michael Childers. At the end of 2001 he suffered a stroke from which he did not fully recover, and his ability to speak was affected. In 2002 Bafta held a special ceremony in Los Angeles to present John Schlesinger with a lifetime achievement award. He was not able to attend himself and Dustin Hoffman read his acceptance speech. In July 2003 he was admitted to the Desert Region medical center near his home in Palm Springs, California, after suffering breathing difficulties. On 24th July he was taken off life support. Michael Childers was with him.

Greatest Achievement: It is arguable whether the early "new wave" films of the early sixties, A Kind of Loving, Billy Liar and Darling are better or as good as the middle period Midnight Cowboy, Sunday Bloody Sunday and Marathon Man but the range and quality of the total and their sympathetic handling of the gay themes make for a very fine achievement.

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