American film director James Foley who was behind films including Fifty Shades of Grey has died after fighting brain cancer his publicist has announced
Fifty Shades of Grey director James Foley has died. The American film director, who worked on the E.L. James franchise, as well as Glengarry Glen Ross and the Netflix hit House of Cards, died “peacefully in his sleep earlier this week” at the age of 71 at his home in Los Angeles.
While no cause of death has yet been confirmed, his publicist stated he had been battling brain cancer for several years. As well as his cinematic work, James also worked with Madonna on her Live to Tell, Papa Don’t Preach and True Blue music videos under the name Peter Percher and was best man at her wedding to now-former husband Sean Penn in 1985.
After graduating from New York University and then USC in Los Angeles, he was able to jumpstart his career thanks to a chance meeting. He told Film Freak Central: “I was very lucky, and in the perverse calculus of Hollywood, I was in the last year of film school and shared a house with a guy.
“There was a woman who was pursuing my friend, so we had this film school party, which consisted of people projecting their student films onto a white wall and getting stoned.
“And this girl came. Hal Ashby was pursuing her — she was pursuing my friend, and Hal was pursuing her — and Hal called her up and asked to come to this party full of film students.
“Just as he walked through the door, my film was showing on the wall. I’ll never know whether he was being polite or anything, but he told me he liked it and stuff and he was going to form a company that was going to produce other people’s movies and what did I want to do? I could write something and direct it.”
James, born December 28, 1953, in Brooklyn, New York, made his debut in 1984 with Reckless, starring Aidan Quinn and Daryl Hannah, before he transitioned to television shows, movies, and music videos. But his work on At Close Range received more praise than his debut.
He later went on to work with Edward Burns, Dustin Hoffman and Rachel Ewisz on the 2003 movie, Confidence, with the film following Jake Vig (Burns) whose plan to avenge the murder of his friend goes wrong, leaving him in debt to a mob boss.
James also directed Halle Berry and Bruce Willis in the 2007 neo-noir psychological thriller, Perfect Stranger. However, the film was panned by critics; despite its $60 million budget, it raked in just $ 73.5 million at the box office.
His last two credits are Fifty Shades Darker, starring Dakota Johnson, Jamie Dornan and Rita Ora, which saw the trailer rake in over 114 million views in its first 24 hours after being released on various social media channels. The movie went on to amass a total of $381.1million at the box office across the globe, a stark profit from its budget of $55million.
Meanwhile, his last credit, Fifty Shades Freed in 2019, grossed a total of $ 100.4 million in the United States and Canada alone, with a global total at the box office of $371 million.2million – a hefty profit from its budget of $55million.
The Macmillan Support Line offers confidential support to people living with cancer and their loved ones. If you need to talk, call us on 0808 808 0000.
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