Peter Medak

Peter Medak died on Tuesday 27 October 2026 in Los Angeles, aged 88. His family announced the death, which was reported the next day by The Hollywood Reporter and other outlets. No cause of death was made public, and funeral or memorial arrangements had not been announced.

Péter Medák was born in Budapest, Hungary, on 23 December 1937. His parents were Elisabeth (née Diamounstein) and Gyula Medak, a textile manufacturer, and the family was Jewish.

In 1956, at the age of eighteen, he fled Hungary for England during the country's uprising against Communist rule. His aunt, an opera singer with connections in the entertainment business, helped him get a job as a trainee with Associated British.

Medak learned filmmaking from the ground up, working as an editor, cameraman and assistant director at the major British studios. He helped Fred Zinnemann on The Sundowners (1960), was an assistant director on The Phantom of the Opera (1962) and was second assistant director on The V.I.P.s (1963), with Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton.

In 1963 he signed a seven year contract with MCA Universal to direct television in Hollywood and London, and made his directing debut with a 1965 episode of Court Martial. In 1967 he signed with Paramount to make features. His first, Negatives (1968), featured Glenda Jackson in one of her first film roles. In 1972 he directed A Day in the Death of Joe Egg, adapted from Peter Nichols's play with Alan Bates and Janet Suzman, and The Ruling Class, from Peter Barnes's play, which played in competition at Cannes and brought Peter O'Toole the fifth of his eight Oscar nominations for best actor. Medak later called his first three films "total perfection for me to make as a young director".

In 1973 he was offered Death Wish but lost it after insisting on Henry Fonda for the lead. Instead he made Ghost in the Noonday Sun, a pirate comedy with Peter Sellers and Spike Milligan shot in Cyprus. He described it as "probably the biggest nightmare of my life", and Columbia never released it in cinemas. He did not make another feature until The Odd Job (1978) with Graham Chapman.

The Changeling (1980), with George C. Scott, restored his standing and became his most enduring film. His other features included Zorro, The Gay Blade (1981), The Men's Club (1986), The Krays (1990) with Gary and Martin Kemp, Let Him Have It (1991) with Christopher Eccleston and Tom Courtenay, Romeo Is Bleeding (1993) with Gary Oldman and Lena Olin, Pontiac Moon (1994) and Species II (1998). In 2018 he directed the documentary The Ghost of Peter Sellers about the making of his ill-fated pirate film.

His television credits stretched across five decades and included Space: 1999, Hart to Hart, Magnum, P.I., Faerie Tale Theatre, St. Elsewhere, Homicide: Life on the Street, Chicago Hope, The Wire, Carnivàle, Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, House, Cold Case and Breaking Bad, along with the mini series The Feast of All Saints and the 1997 television film The Hunchback of Notre Dame with Mandy Patinkin.

Medak married Catherine Marie La Kermance in 1963. They had two children, and the marriage ended with her death in London in 1972. From 1973 until their divorce in 1984 he was married to the English actress Carolyn Seymour, who played the wife of O'Toole's character in The Ruling Class; they had two children. His third marriage, to the opera singer Julia Migenes, lasted from 1988 to 2003.

He was survived by his children Christopher, Joshua, Karen and Cornelia, and by five grandchildren.

Medak's reputation rests above all on The Ruling Class and The Changeling. The first gave Peter O'Toole one of his most celebrated roles, and the second became a touchstone of the haunted house film, held in high regard by Martin Scorsese, Steven Spielberg, Guillermo del Toro and Alejandro Amenábar. Spielberg screened it repeatedly for his crew on Poltergeist, and Medak noted that both Spielberg and Scorsese kept their own 35mm prints. The Krays and Let Him Have It remain significant British films about real crimes, while his long run of American television work, from Hart to Hart to The Wire and Breaking Bad, made him one of the most versatile directors of his generation. His career is recorded in the Directors Guild of America's Visual History interviews.