Russell, Ken (Henry Kenneth Alfred) (1927– )

English film director. His work, typified by stylistic extravagance, includes Women in Love (1969), The Music Lovers (1970), Tommy (1975), Lisztomania (1975), Altered States (1980), and Gothic (1986). His work is often criticized for self-indulgence, containing gratuitous sex and violence, but is also regarded for its vitality and imagination.

Russell has made television biographies of the lives of the composers Edward Elgar, Frederick Delius, and Richard Strauss. In the 1990s he worked widely in television, directing Lady Chatterley (1992) and Dogboys (1998), among others.

Other recent films include another D H Lawrence adaptation The Rainbow (1989), Whore (1991), Mindbender (1995), The Fall of the Louse of Usher (2002), but his later work has not matched the quality of his 1970s films.