Forbes, Bryan John Clarke (1926– )

English film producer, director, and screenwriter. After acting in such films as An Inspector Calls (1954), he made his directorial debut with Whistle Down the Wind (1961). Among his other films are The L-Shaped Room (1963), The Wrong Box (1966), The Raging Moon (1971), The Stepford Wives (1975), and The Naked Face (1985).

He directed the television film The Endless Game (1990), and was one of several screenwriters to work on Richard Attenborough's Chaplin (1992). He is the author of several novels, including Dame Edith Evans: Ned's Girl (1978) and Endless Game (1985), and of two autobiographies, Notes For A Life (1974) and A Divided Life (1994).

Forbes was a long-serving actor before turning to direction and screenwriting. In the late 1960s and early 1970s he was head of production at Elstree Studios. His early films as a director, including Whistle Down the Wind, about a fugitive murderer hiding out in the country, and The L-Shaped Room, about a pregnant French woman living in a down-at-heels London boarding house, were sensitive dramas. The Stepford Wives was a chilling thriller about suburban housewives who have been turned into robots by their husbands. His screenplay for The Angry Silence was nominated for an Academy Award in 1960.