Veteran TV and film director Alvin Rakoff, who gave Sean Connery his first leading role, dies aged 97

Rakoff was known for numerous film, theatre and TV productions including Requiem for a Heavyweight, Passport to Shame and A Dance to the Music of Time, and has more than 100 credits to his name.

He has died at age 97, his family have announced. The full statement said that he “passed away . . . surrounded by his loving family in the same, beautiful old house in Chiswick he had bought back in 1971”. His cause of death has not been revealed.

Tributes have also poured in from the entertainment industry. Stephen Fry said: “Alvin Rakoff was a giant of film, theatre and TV. His Midas touch with spotting and fostering talent introduced the world to some of the last century’s greatest stars.” Dame Judi Dench said: “I have such wonderful memories of Alvin … A very endearing person.” Rakoff, who was born in Toronto in 1927,came from a family of east European Jewish immigrants to Canada. He came to the UK in 1952 after deciding to not to become involved in his family business and commit to a career in show business instead.

He had worked as a writer and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC), and so was soon accepted on the BBC’s directors’ training course after his move to the UK. He went on to direct a host of successful TV dramas.

The awards then followed as his name grew and his 1954 drama Waiting for Gillian won a National Television award and Call Me Daddy won an Emmy in 1967. In 1957 he noteably cast a then unknown Sean Connery in the lead role in the British version of the successful American TV play Requiem for a Heavyweight. A year after that he made his feature film directing debut with the Diana Dors thriller Passport to Shame.

Rakoff worked on TV plays and dramas which had mostly been made in the UK. The Terence Rattigan-scripted Heart to Heart was part of the Europe-wide broadcast The Largest Theatre in the World in 1962.

In the 1970s and 1980s, at the height of his fame, Rakoff embarked on large-scale projects. The Adventures of Don Quixote in 1973, John Mortimer’s A Voyage Round My Father which starred Laurence Olivier in 1982. In 1997 he was one of two directors on A Dance to the Music of Time, adapted from Anthony Powell’s novel series.

Rakoff published two volumes of memoirs, I’m Just the Guy Who Says Action and I Need Another Take, Darling in 2021 and 2022. He was married twice, to actor Jacqueline Hill from 1958 to her death in 1993, and to Sally Hughes in 2013, who survives him.