Sidney J. Furie

Both parents were Polish-Jewish immigrants who arrived in Canada in 1930. The name "Furie", however, has French roots.

Cites seeing Captains Courageous (1937) as a young boy as having been the formative movie-going experience growing up in Canada. He told his mother about wanting to make movies after seeing it.

Attended Carnegie Institute of Technology, or Carnegie Tech (now Carnegie Mellon University) in Pittsburgh in the early 1950s.

His favorite films are Vincente Minnelli's The Bad and the Beautiful (1952) and John Ford's They Were Expendable (1945).

Toronto-born Sidney J. Furie has enjoyed an incredibly distinguished career that has spanned more than five decades. Having dabbled in every genre, Furie has directed films starring Marlon Brando, Frank Sinatra, Robert Redford, Diana Ross, Michael Caine, Peter O'Toole, Rodney Dangerfield, Barbara Hershey, Gene Hackman, Donald Sutherland, 'Laurence Olivier' (qav) and countless others. He directed the first two feature-length fiction films ever made in English Canada, A Dangerous Age (1957) and A Cool Sound from Hell (1959), both independently financed, before emigrating to London in 1960.

In 1961 he directed five feature films in a single year, before finally scoring his first box-office success with Wonderful to Be Young! (1961), starring the "British Elvis Presley", Cliff Richard.

The critical and commercial success of Furie's 1963 British New Wave film The Leather Boys (1964), a kitchen-sink drama starring Rita Tushingham and Dudley Sutton, delivered him to the attention of high-powered producer Harry Saltzman, who hired him to direct the groundbreaking film The Ipcress File (1965), which won the BAFTA award for Best Picture. Michael Caine became an overnight star because of the film's success. The film also screened in competition at the Cannes Film Festival.

Walter Shenson offered Furie the chance to direct A Hard Day's Night (1964) because of his success with the Cliff Richard pictures Wonderful to Be Young! (1961) and Swingers' Paradise (1964). Furie declined.

Furie then emigrated to Hollywood to direct Marlon Brando in The Appaloosa (1966) and Frank Sinatra in The Naked Runner (1967) for Universal and Warner Brothers, respectively.

Paramount Pictures, then under the aegis of the new Gulf+Western management regime, hired Furie in 1967. He would work as a Paramount filmmaker for the next eight years.

Beginning in 1968, he directed five films for the studio.

His box-office hit Lady Sings the Blues (1972) was nominated for five Academy Awards and was Paramount's second biggest money-maker that year, behind only The Godfather (1972).

Other career highlights include The Boys in Company C (1978) (one of the first Vietnam War pictures about combat soldiers, later to provide the basis for Full Metal Jacket (1987)), the underrated action epic Hit! (1973), and the "Iron Eagle" series. He has also maintained dual citizenship between the U. S. and Canada.

He was fired from The Jazz Singer (1980) and quit Night of the Juggler (1980). Of the former, he claims that he wanted to get fired from that production.

In 1981 he directed The Entity (1982), a cult classic that was named by Martin Scorsese as the fourth best horror film ever made, ranking ahead of both The Shining (1980) and Psycho (1960).

Furie was assigned to direct Superman IV: The Quest for Peace (1987), but was challenged by substantial last-minute budget cuts and a script he could not change (engineered personally by Christopher Reeve).

Throughout the 1990s and 2000s he returned to his native Canada to helm a series of films, often direct-to-video pictures, ranging from the war drama Going Back (2001) to the Canadian-British co-production Rock My World (2002), a comedy starring Peter O'Toole and Joan Plowright.

In 1999 his espionage thriller The Ipcress File (1965) was included at #59 on the BFI's list of the 100 greatest British films of the 20th century.

He was personally asked by Rodney Dangerfield to direct My 5 Wives (2000). Dangerfield had a rocky history with most of his directors, and left many sets in disgust, never to return to many of them. Furie was Dangerfield's favorite directing collaborator.

Was originally hired to direct The Defender (2004), but left due to illness during the prep period. Leading actor Dolph Lundgren directed the film.

In 2009 Martin Scorsese placed Furie's The Entity (1982) on his list of the 11 Scariest Horror Films of All Time. It placed #4 on the list, above Stanley Kubrick's The Shining (1980) and Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho (1960).

Mentioned by name in Sidewalks Entertainment: Motown the Musical (2014).