He is best known for directing feature films such as Point Blank (1967), Hell in the Pacific (1968), Deliverance (1972), Zardoz (1974), Exorcist II: The Heretic (1977), Excalibur (1981), The Emerald Forest (1985), Hope and Glory (1987), The General (1998), The Tailor of Panama (2001) and Queen and Country (2014).

George Boorman was of Dutch parentage; he served as a captain in the British Indian Army during World War I, and later worked for the founder of Shell Oil.

[9] In 1963 he wrote and directed a documentary about professional football, Six Days to Saturday, which focused on a week in the life of Swindon Town, who were in England's second division.

[11] Boorman was drawn to Hollywood for the opportunity to make more ambitious films and in Point Blank (1967), based on a novel by Richard Stark (a pen name of Donald E. Westlake), he brought a stranger's vision to the decaying fortress of Alcatraz and the proto-hippy world of the West Coast of the United States.

Lee Marvin gave the unknown director his full support, telling MGM that he deferred all his approvals on the project to Boorman.

After Point Blank, Boorman worked with Lee Marvin and Toshiro Mifune on the robinsonade Hell in the Pacific (1968), which tells a fable of two representative soldiers stranded on an island.

Boorman achieved much greater resonance with Deliverance (US, 1972, adapted from a novel by James Dickey), depicting the ordeal of four urban men, played by Jon Voight, Burt Reynolds, Ronny Cox and Ned Beatty, who encounter danger from an unexpected quarter while whitewater-rafting through the Appalachian backwoods.

Zardoz (1974), starring Sean Connery, is a post-apocalyptic science fiction piece, set in the 23rd century where society is divided into two worlds.

Boorman was selected as director for Exorcist II: The Heretic (USA, 1977), a move that surprised the industry given his dislike of the original film.

[12] The original script by a Broadway playwright, William Goodhart, was intellectual and ambitious, being concerned with the metaphysical nature of the battle between good and evil, and influenced by the writings of Catholic theologian Pierre Teilhard De Chardin,[12] "I found It extremely compelling.

It was based on Chardin's intoxicating idea that biological evolution was the first step In God's plan, starting with inert rock, and culminating in humankind.

Boorman took the initiative to promote the film himself by making VHS copies available for no charge to Academy members at several Los Angeles-area video rental stores.

Boorman's idea later became ubiquitous during Hollywood's award season, and by the 2010s, more than a million Oscar screeners were mailed to Academy members each year.

In Autumn 2013 Boorman began shooting Queen and Country, the sequel to his 1987 Oscar-nominated Hope and Glory, using locations in Shepperton and Romania.

[25][22] Boorman was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 1994 Birthday Honours for services to the film industry.

[26] In 2004, Boorman was also made a Fellow of BAFTA and in 2013 he received a Fellowship from the British Film Institute, an organisation he had previously served as a Governor.