Michael Apted was born in the UK, and studied history and law at Cambridge University before beginning his career in film. He soon became a well-established television director soon after beginning work as a TV researcher. In 1972 he directed Triple Echo, followed by Stardust, The Squeeze and Agatha.

Apted's acclaimed film, The Coal Miner's Daughter, marked his first directing project in the United States. In the USA in 1981 he directed The Continental Divide and Gorky Park, before returning to England to shoot Kipperbang.

In 1984 he directed First Born and three years later, Critical Condition.

Gorillas In The Mist (1998) was filmed in Rwanda and Kenya, following which Michael travelled to the Soviet Union to film The Long Way Home, a documentary about Boris Brebenshikov.

In 1990 he directed Class Action. Two years later he directed three films: Incident at Oglala, Thunderheart and 35 Up. The latter was a follow-up to his acclaimed 1963 "Seven Up" documentary, of which 42 Up is the latest instalment. Fascinatingly, the model of Seven Up  has been exported to Russia.

In 1994 Michael Apted directed the thriller Blink. Also in 1994 his documentary Moving the Mountain described the events leading up to the Tiananmen Square atrocity. The film was premiered at the Human Rights Watch International Film Festival. Later that year, he directed Jodie Foster in Nell.

More recently he directed the medical drama Extreme Measures and also the documentary Inspirations, chronicling the lives of six diverse artists including David Bowie and Roy Liechtenstein. He also directed the James Bond movie, The World Is Not Enough. The quality of his contributions to the Documentary film was recognised in 1999 when he received the Career Achievement award from the International Documentary association.

Michael Apted has had made 20 major feature films in approximately the same number of years. His latest, Enigma has just been released. It is a story set in the context of the successful efforts of British cipher experts in cracking the secret coding system used by the Germans.

  epff@psychoanalysis.org.uk