Ken Loach

His biography is in: John Wakeman, editor. "World Film Directors, Volume Two, 1945-1985". Pages 593-597. New York: The H.W. Wilson Company, 1988.

He has five children: Stephen Loach (born 1963), Nicholas (born 1965, died 1971 in a road accident), Hannah Loach (born 1967), director Jim Loach (born 1969), and documentary filmmaker Emma Loach (born 1972).

Unlike virtually all his contemporaries, Ken Loach has never succumbed to the siren call of Hollywood, and it's virtually impossible to imagine his particular brand of British socialist realism translating well to that context. After studying law at St. Peter's College, Oxford, he branched out into the theater, performing with a touring repertory company. This led to television, where in alliance with producer Tony Garnett he produced a series of docudramas, most notably the devastating "Cathy Come Home" episode of The Wednesday Play (1964), whose impact was so massive that it led directly to a change in the homeless laws.

At an anniversary screening of The Wednesday Play: Cathy Come Home (1966) in 2002, Loach spoke of how the play had become an important part in making the debate on homelessness public. At the same event his producer, Tony Garnett, pointed out that the number of homeless in Britain had more than doubled "...but Ken [Loach] and I now live in much more expensive houses.".

He made his feature debut Poor Cow (1967) the following year, and with Kes (1969), he produced what is now acclaimed as one of the finest films ever made in Britain.

However, the following two decades saw his career in the doldrums with his films poorly distributed (despite the obvious quality of work such as The Gamekeeper (1968) and Looks and Smiles (1981)) and his TV work in some cases never broadcast (most notoriously, his documentaries on the 1984 miners' strike).

He declined the O.B.E. (Officer of the Order of the British Empire) for his services to film in 1977.

He made a spectacular comeback in the 1990s, with a series of award-winning films firmly establishing him in the pantheon of great European directors - his films have always been more popular in mainland Europe than in his native country or the US (where Riff-Raff (1991) was shown with subtitles because of the wide range of dialects).

Twice winner of the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival for The Wind that Shakes the Barley (2006) and I, Daniel Blake (2016). The other directors to have won the Palme twice are: Bille August, Emir Kusturica, Shôhei Imamura, Michael Haneke, Jean-Pierre Dardenne & Luc Dardenne, Alf Sjöberg and Francis Ford Coppola.

He has supported Olivier Besancenot's 2007 French presidential campaign.

He condemned the detention of Jafar Panahi, arrested on 1 March 2010 along with Mohammad Rasoulof and Mehdi Pourmoussa. "It is a very shocking development and further demonstration of the intolerance of the regime. I hope all people working in films will call for his release, and speak out in solidarity for him and all Iranian filmmakers working under similar conditions. It is completely unacceptable." Pourmoussa and Rasoulof were released from the Evin prison on 17 March 2010, but Panahi remains in ward 209.

He was interviewed in "World Directors in Dialogue" by Bert Cardullo (Scarecrow Press, 2011).

As of 2016, he has a record of 13 films in the official competition of the Cannes Film Festival.

In January 2019, mathematician and television personality Rachel Riley accused Loach on Twitter of promoting antisemitism.