James Foley, whose decades’ realization career lasted both cinema and television, died at 71.
The legendary filmmaker died “peacefully in his sleep earlier this week” in Los Angeles after a “fight of several years” against brain cancer, his representative at Hollywood reporter said on Thursday.
Foley’s staging credits include classic films “At Close Range” (1986), “Glengarry Glen Ross” (1992), “Fear” (1996) and the last two films of the Dakota Johnson-Starring franchise “Fifty Shades of Gray”: 2018).
Regarding television, the cinema icon has produced several episodes of “House of Cards” from Netflix, the Showtime Hit “Billions” and the strange series by David Lynch “Twin Peaks”.
Born on December 28, 1953, Foley grew up in New York before studying cinema at New York University and the University of South California in Los Angeles.
Years before his heartbreaking death, Foley awarded a fortuitous meeting to the late director and editor -in -chief Hal Ashby in his last year of a film school launching his 30 -year career behind the camera.
“Because Hal Ashby had hired me, I became known to other people in Hollywood and became a little viable in this strange Hollywood calculation just because someone else, respected, thought I was viable,” he told Film Freak Central in 2003.
But the official beginnings of Foley did not come before 1984, when he directed Aidan Quinn and Daryl Hannah in the romantic drama “Reckless”.
His next project carried out the clip for the success of Madonna “Dress You Up” in 1985. Foley would work regularly with the queen of pop to help shoot videos for “Live Tell”, “True Blue”, “The Look of Love”, and many others.
“So me, the crew and she made a port in the places I had never seen in my life,” he said one day about the shooting of the clip for Madonna’s song in 1986 “Papa Don’t Preach, the appellant” a magical memory “.
Foley then worked with some of Hollywood’s most emblematic actors, notably Sean Penn and Christopher Walken at “at close range”; Al Pacino, Alec Baldwin, Ed Harris, Alan Arkin and Kevin Spacey in “Glengarry Glen Ross”; Mark Wahlberg and Reese Witherspoon in “Fear”; Gene Hackman and Chris O’Donnell in “The Chamber”; And Halle Berry and Bruce Willis in “Perfect Stranger”.
But a bad experience on the set of “Perfect Stranger” would have led the filmmaker to take a break in making films until he resumed the franchise “Fifty Shades”.
“For various reasons, it was not the best experience I had,” he told Filmink in 2022 concerning the Thriller de Berry and Willis. “I sort of withdrew after this moment.”
He also shared his secret to have such a long and eclectic career.
“I am incredibly practical on everything,” said Foley. “You must know when to apply or relieve pressure. You must make the actors aware that you are empathetic. The best actors want to be directed.”
“Once you are on the same wavelength,” he added, “you get incredible results.”
“Fifty Shades Freed”, published in 2018, was the latest director of Foley.
Foley is survived by his brother, Kevin; her sisters, Eileen and Jo Ann; and a nephew, quinn, by THR. He was preceded by a second brother, Gerard.
