Eclectic director of documentaries and feature films, from Seven Up! to James BondMichael Apted, who has died aged 79, was a director who moved with ease between socially conscious documentaries and feature films with a special focus on female achievement.
In the latter camp was Coal Miner’s Daughter (1980), for which Sissy Spacek won the best
Actress Oscar for playing the country and western
Singer Loretta Lynn, and Gorillas in the Mist (1988), starring Sigourney Weaver as the murdered conservationist Dian Fossey. He also enjoyed commercial success with the
James Bond film The World Is Not Enough (1999) and the CS Lewis adaptation The Chronicles of Narnia: the Voyage of the Dawn Treader (2010).