From the archives… published originally in The Independent shortly after my father died. Why do you deliberately set out to shock your audience?", a film critic once asked my father. "I believe in mass therapy!" he answered. On this occasion, it was my mother, Vivian, acting the role of a critic and I, at four years old, playing the role of my father (who had written the lines and dubbed his voice over mine). Shot in our garden, with me wearing clothes from our fancy-dress box and the local party store, it could have been just anyone's home movie. In a sense, it was. But it was more than that, too. It was an autobiographical documentary for The South Bank Show. When it aired in 1990 it was billed as A British Picture: A Portrait of an Enfant Terrible. If the world saw him as a terrible child he'd get his own terrible child to play him – me.
My father Ken Russell, the 'domestic' director
My father Ken Russell, the 'domestic…
My father Ken Russell, the 'domestic' director
From the archives… published originally in The Independent shortly after my father died. Why do you deliberately set out to shock your audience?", a film critic once asked my father. "I believe in mass therapy!" he answered. On this occasion, it was my mother, Vivian, acting the role of a critic and I, at four years old, playing the role of my father (who had written the lines and dubbed his voice over mine). Shot in our garden, with me wearing clothes from our fancy-dress box and the local party store, it could have been just anyone's home movie. In a sense, it was. But it was more than that, too. It was an autobiographical documentary for The South Bank Show. When it aired in 1990 it was billed as A British Picture: A Portrait of an Enfant Terrible. If the world saw him as a terrible child he'd get his own terrible child to play him – me.