John Richard Schlesinger[1] CBE (/ˈʃlɛsɪndʒər/ SHLESS-in-jər; 16 February 1926 – 25 July 2003) was an English film and stage director, and actor.

[2][3] Schlesinger started his career making British dramas A Kind of Loving (1962), Billy Liar (1963), and Far from the Madding Crowd (1967).

In 1970, he was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 1970 Birthday Honours for services to film, and in 2002, he was made a BAFTA Fellow.

[4] Schlesinger was born and raised in Hampstead, London,[5] in a Jewish family,[6] the eldest of five children[7] of distinguished Emmanuel College, Cambridge–educated paediatrician and physician Bernard Edward Schlesinger OBE FRCP (1896–1984), who had also served in the Royal Army Medical Corps as a brigadier,[8] and his wife Winifred Henrietta, daughter of Hermann Regensburg, a stockbroker from Frankfurt.

In 1958, Schlesinger created a documentary on Benjamin Britten and the Aldeburgh Festival for the BBC's Monitor TV programme, including rehearsals of the children's opera Noye's Fludde featuring a young Michael Crawford.

Schlesinger's next film was the period drama Far from the Madding Crowd (1967), an adaptation of Thomas Hardy's popular novel accentuated by beautiful English country locations.

A story of two hustlers living on the fringe in the bad side of New York City, it was Schlesinger's first film shot in the US, and it won Oscars for Best Director and Best Picture.

Later, came the major box office and critical failure of Honky Tonk Freeway (1981), followed by films that attracted mixed responses from the public, and low returns, although The Falcon and the Snowman (1985) made money and Pacific Heights (1990) was a box-office hit.

Other later works include plays for television An Englishman Abroad (1983) and A Question of Attribution (1991), both with scripts by Alan Bennett, The Innocent (1993) and The Next Best Thing (2000).

Schlesinger directed on stage Timon of Athens (1965) for the Royal Shakespeare Company and the musical I and Albert (1972) at London's Piccadilly Theatre.

In 1991, Schlesinger made a brief return to acting, portraying the gay character 'Derek' in the TV adaptation of The Lost Language of Cranes for the BBC.