Director Nicolas Roeg dies at 90

LONDON - Nicolas Roeg, a director of provocative and otherworldly films who gave Mick Jagger and David Bowie enduring screen roles, has died. He was 90.

The British director of “Don’t Look Now” and many other films died Friday night, his son, Nicolas Roeg Jr., told Britain’s Press Association.

“He was a genuine dad,” Roeg Jr. said on Saturday. “He just had his 90th birthday in August.”

He didn’t provide details about his father’s death during a brief telephone call.

During the ‘70s, Roeg sent Jenny Agutter and his son Luc Roeg on the Australian Outback odyssey “Walkabout”; gave Jagger a big-screen role in the thriller “Performance,” which was co-directed with Donald Cammell; and plunged Julie Christie and Donald Sutherland into the Venice-set psychological horror “Don’t Look Now.”

“Don’t Look Now” became famous for its realistic depiction of sex. Roeg later said that rumors the sex had been real were “very flattering” because that meant people felt the film was authentic.

Sutherland said Roeg was “a fearless visionary.”

“He was a liberating joy to work for,” Sutherland said in a statement. “I fell in love with him then and will love him forever.”

In “The Man Who Fell to Earth,” Roeg directed Bowie - perfectly cast and sublimely strange - as an alien who crashes on Earth looking for a way to save his own planet.

Bowie’s son, filmmaker Duncan Jones, wrote on Twitter: “Just heard another great storyteller, the inimitable Nicolas Roeg left us today. What an incredible body of work he’s left us with!”

Roeg’s later films include the intellectually playful “Insignificance,” in which Albert Einstein matched wits with Marilyn Monroe. His last major film was his 1990 adaptation of Roald Dahl’s “The Witches,” which starred Anjelica Huston.

The British Film Institute has named “Don’t Look Now” and “Performance” two of the greatest films in Britain’s Top 100 film poll.

AP