Greenaway, Peter (1942– )

Welsh film director. His films are highly stylized and cerebral, richly visual, and often controversial. His feeling for perspective and lighting reveal his early training as a painter. The Draughtsman's Contract (1983), a tale of 18th-century country-house intrigue, is dazzling in its visual and narrative complexity. Later films include The Cook, the Thief, His Wife and Her Lover (1989), The Man in the Bath (2001), and The Tulse Luper Suitcases: The Moab Story (2003).

The Falls (1980) established Greenaway's reputation for carefully composed images, a fascination with numbers and lists, and mischievous intellectualism. For all their formal beauty and technical polish, A Zed and Two Noughts (1985), The Belly of an Architect (1987), and Drowning by Numbers (1988) had a mixed critical reception. Other films include Prospero's Books (1991), The Baby of Macon (1992), The Pillow Book (1996), and 81/2 Women (1999).

His work prompted the introduction in the USA of the NC-17 classification category for films with an erotic but non-pornographic content that did not merit the 18 certificate.

Greenaway was born in Newport, Gwent. He trained as an artist before entering films in 1965 as an editor, mostly handling documentaries. He began making experimental films in 1966, the best-known being Windows (1975), Vertical Features Remake (1978), and A Walk Through H (1978). The Cook, the Thief, His Wife and Her Lover and The Baby of Macon were controversial because of their erotic content, and his work prompted the introduction in the USA of a new film classification category.