He was associated with, though separate from, the Free Cinema movement;[1] he said he was greatly influenced by Humphrey Jennings and by Michelangelo Antonioni’s movie Il Grido (1957).
[2] Simmons was born in West Ham, then in Essex, now part of the London Borough of Newham, the fourth of five children – three boys and two girls – to parents of Polish-Jewish extraction, Miriam (née Corb) and Joseph Simmons (originally Anzulowsky), from a family of market traders.
[4] For several years Simmons worked in radio and made television commercials until his next feature The Optimists of Nine Elms (1973) starring Peter Sellers.
[5] He also directed episodes of British television series including The Professionals, Supergran, Inspector Morse, Van Der Valk, A Touch of Frost and C.A.T.S.
He is survived by his second wife, Maria St Clare, whom he married in 1981, and their three sons, Luke, Noah and Micah.