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Jeremy Thomas, the distinguished British producer of films including Sexy Beast, High-Rise and the multi-Oscar-winning The Last Emperor, has died aged 77.
A representative for Thomas said he died on Friday “peacefully, at his country home in Oxfordshire, surrounded by his family and loved ones”.
Thomas, who started producing feature films in the early 1970s, was known for forging strong creative relationships with acclaimed auteurs, producing a string of films directed by the likes of Nicolas Roeg, David Cronenberg and Bernardo Bertolucci.
The Last Emperor, directed by Bertolucci, was an early triumph for Thomas, winning nine Oscars including best picture. He went on to become a major figure in the British film-making establishment, including a spell as chair of the British Film Institute and winning a Bafta for outstanding British contribution to cinema.
Thomas was held in universally high esteem by the rest of the film industry. Fellow producer Stephen Woolley said that Thomas “was a huge inspiration and a massively undervalued genius and rebel in our industry” and that “I have to thank him for my career”. Mike Downey, former chair of the European film academy said: “Jeremy Thomas was one of the most significant producers of world cinema in the world. The list of the giants of cinema that he curated, encouraged, selflessly supported and believed in, often when others wouldn’t take the risk, was a tribute to his belief in film as an art above all else. Jeremy’s legacy is incalculable and he has left an indelible mark on cinema history.” Trainspotting producer Andrew Macdonald said in a statement to Variety: “He was a hero for me. A rebel with taste.” Luca Guadagnino, director of A Bigger Splash and Queer said: “The canon of his work is unmatched, and some of the greatest movies of the past 50 years have been produced by him. And the level of the partnerships that he established in his career is incredible, from Nagisa Oshima to Bernardo Bertolucci.”
Born in 1949, Thomas’s father, Ralph, was a prolific film director whose work included the popular Doctor in the House series starring Dirk Bogarde, and his uncle Gerald Thomas directed all 30 of the Carry On films. Thomas started out as an assistant editor, working on the Jimmy Cliff thriller The Harder They Come and Ken Loach’s Family Life, before gaining his first producer credit on Mad Dog Morgan in 1976, with Dennis Hopper as the 19th-century Australian outlaw of the title.
Thomas was quickly into his stride, making Bad Timing, Insignificance and Eureka with Roeg, The Shout with Jerzy Skolimowski and Merry Christmas, Mr Lawrence with the Japanese master director Nagisa Oshima. The success of The Last Emperor, which Thomas had to finance independently, consolidated his status as a leading figure in British cinema, and he subsequently concentrated on prestige projects including The Sheltering Sky and Little Buddha (both with Bertolucci) and Naked Lunch (with Cronenberg).
Thomas then suggested to Cronenberg he should direct JG Ballard’s Crash, and the resulting film was enormously controversial, resulting in local authority bans in several areas in the UK. Following this, Thomas’s films included riskier propositions, such as Sexy Beast, directed by Jonathan Glazer, an adaptation of Alexander Trocchi’s Young Adam, by David Mackenzie, and Terry Gilliam’s bizarre corpse comedy Tideland. Later highlights were Jim Jarmusch’s vampire fantasy Only Lovers Left Alive, another Ballard adaptation, High-Rise, directed by Ben Wheatley, and Tale of Tales and Dogman from the Italian director Matteo Garrone.
In 2019 Thomas was the subject of a documentary by Mark Cousins, who accompanied him on his car drive from the UK to the Cannes film festival for another Garrone film, Pinocchio; it screened there in 2021. Thomas also directed one film himself: All the Little Animals, starring Christian Bale, which was released in 1999. His most recent film, Bad Lieutenant: Tokyo, directed by Takashi Miike, is due to premiere at the Toronto film festival on Monday.
