- He was interviewed at great length by fellow director Steven Soderbergh for a book, "Getting Away With It", published in 1999. In it he revealed that Sean Connery had never spoken to him after the box-office failure of Cuba (1979); that he had lost confidence as a director following the death of his friend Roy Kinnear, although he did not believe that any negligence had caused it; and also, surprisingly, that he had never actually enjoyed being a film director, although he did enjoy the editing process.
- After the death of Roy Kinnear on the shooting of The Return of the Musketeers (1989), Lester decided to quit directing.
- Ironically, he claimed to have never even heard of the Superman character before being hired to work on the films due to comic books not being allowed in his house as a child. This led to many fans and critics suspecting and in some cases accusing Lester of not understanding and therefore not respecting the Superman character, especially judging by the satirical tone and ultimate box-office failure of Superman III (1983).
- While working on the parts of Superman (1978) that would be incorporated in the sequel Superman II (1980), cinematographer Geoffrey Unsworth died unexpectedly on October 28, 1978. When Lester took over the directorial reins from Richard Donner, he decided to give the sequel a comic-book look rather than the stately, mythic look that Donner and Unsworth had crafted for the first movie, and intended for the sequel. He scrapped much of Unsworth's footage and hired British cameraman Robert Paynter, who had worked with potboiler director Michael Winner perfecting a style that complimented Winner's propensity for comic book-style violence. Lester was not sympathetic to the epic look that Donner had given the original "Superman", saying that he did not want to do "the David Lean thing". Lester decided on creating a comic book-style that would evoke Superman's roots in comic books. Lester deliberately wanted to break the stylistic "American epic" mold created by Donner and, with Paynter, set out to recreate the look and feel of a comic book. For this reason, Lester did not use his own long-time collaborator, lighting cameraman David Watkin, as Watkin's photographic style was too classical, and thus not adaptable to a comic book aesthetic. Working with Lester, Paynter and his camera operator Freddie Cooper developed a different type of framing from the original, but one that was ideal for their concept of a comic book film: They replaced Unsworth's gliding camera with horizontal panning and static framing to evoke comic books and comic strips, with their static frames that are crammed with people and objects. Similarly, the composition of shots the trio developed for "Superman II" had objects and people crammed into the frame. To further emphasize comic book composition, the action was photographed from one angle, to give the film a desired flatness (harkening back to the technique of the early sound era, Lester's films had always been shot with three cameras simultaneously filming the action all at one time, with two cameras for close-ups and one for the establishing shot).
- Son of Elliott Lester.
- He entered a university at 15 years old, and after receiving a degree in clinical psychology, he graduated at 19 years old.
- He directed his close friend Roy Kinnear in eight films: Help! (1965), A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum (1966), How I Won the War (1967), The Bed Sitting Room (1969), The Three Musketeers (1973), Juggernaut (1974), The Four Musketeers: Milady's Revenge (1974) and The Return of the Musketeers (1989). Kinnear was also in the original two-hour version of "Royal Flash", but was one of several actors to be cut out of the film when it was shortened for general release and for foreign exhibition.
- His father died at age 57 in 1951, when Richard Lester was only 19; his mother died in 1969 in America, whilst he was in the midst of filming "The Bed-Sitting Room" on a very tight schedule in the UK. He was unable to attend her funeral.
- Started his creative career as TV director at CBS' WCAU-TV station, Philadelphia
- Biography in: John Wakeman, editor. "World Film Directors, Volume Two, 1945-1985". Pages 581-586. New York: The H.W. Wilson Company, 1988.
- Member of the 'Official Competition' jury at the 19th Cannes International Film Festival in 1966.
- His film-directing career consisted of bursts of concentrated activity punctuated by long lulls. Between 1962 and 1969, he directed nine feature films, and then none at all for five years. Between 1973 and 1976, he made six more films. In the next ten years, he made six more feature films, but, apart from a documentary film in 1991, he has made nothing since. During his spells of inactivity, he worked on a very large number of projects which never eventuated as actual movies, including, among many others: a version of Joseph Conrad's novel, "Victory" (scripted by Harold Pinter); a comedy about an actor in Stalinist Russia, based on the stories of Yuriy Korotkov and designed as a vehicle for Robin Williams; a film about a London schoolteacher to be entitled "Eff Off!"; a version of George MacDonald Fraser's first novel "Flashman" (he actually did make a film out of Fraser's first sequel to that book, "Royal Flash"); and a thriller called "Send Him Victorious", set mostly in Africa and due to star the intriguing combination of Jeanne Moreau and Sir Ralph Richardson. Lester tried to set this last project up several times, even using his money to finance its development - he actually went bankrupt (briefly) at one time.
Contribute to this page
Suggest an edit or add missing content