LONDON — British filmmaker Peter Yates, who sent Steve McQueen screeching through the streets of San Francisco in a Ford Mustang in “Bullitt,” has died at the age of 81.
A statement from Yates’ agent, Judy Daish, said he died Sunday in London after an illness.
Yates
was nominated for four Academy Awards — two as director and two as producer — for the cycling tale “Breaking Away” and the backstage drama “The Dresser.”
A graduate of London’s Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, Yates directed stage greats including “Dresser” star Albert Finney and Maggie Smith as well as creating one of the film world’s most memorable action sequences — the much-imitated car chase in the 1968 police thriller “Bullitt.”
In 1979, Yates hit another creative high with “Breaking Away,” a deft coming-of-age story about a cycling-mad teenager in small-town Indiana. It was nominated for five Oscars, including best director and best picture — giving Yates two nominations, as he was also a producer on the film.
Born in Aldershot, southern England in 1929, Yates trained as an actor, performed in repertory theater and did a stint as a race-car driver before moving into film. He began as an editor and then became an assistant director on films including Tony Richardson’s “A Taste of Honey” and J. Lee Thompson’s “The Guns of Navarone.”
Yates received two more nominations for “The Dresser,” a 1983 adaptation of Ronald Harwood’s play about an aging actor and his assistant, which he directed and co-produced.
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