Dirk Bogarde, Actor, Writer, Artist & Gardener


  • (Fassbinder directed Dirk Bogarde in “Despair”, scripted by Tom Stoppard,
    based on the novel by Vladamir Nabokov)

    Dirk Bogarde (homepage)

    Dirk Bogarde. .. actor/writer.. gardener – most admirable for courage and honesty.. J. Losey said his career was revived by teaming up with Bogarde.. The Servant & The Accident (Harold Pinter script)..Dirk B won Bafta with Darling (he was superb).. Providence (Alain Resnais) He persuaded Charlotte Rampling to do the Night Porter (Liliana Cavani).. he liked danger & taboo subjects..Despair (Fassbinder).. Death in Venice (Visconti).. his last film was Daddy Nostalgia (w..Jane Birkin directed by Bertrand Tavernier..


  • ( Dirk Bogarde and Marisa Berenson- film still from Death in Venice)

    Daddy Nostalgia.1aabirkin

    (Dirk Bogarde, Tavernier and Jane Birkin in Daddy Nostalgia.)

    Bogarde had only praise for the director: ‘He knows more about the cinema than practically any director I have worked with, Visconti coming a close second.’ I have said, when asked, that Visconti is the Emperor of film, Losey is the King, Tavernier is the Genius. And, for me, so he is a genius in the minutiae of life which he gets on to a cinema screen as no one else has ever done quite so brilliantly before. Nothing very much happens in a Tavernier film. Just all of life.

  • In his second career as a best-selling writer, Dirk wrote 8 volumes of memoirs, six novels, a volume of collected journalism and writings, and a selection of the hundreds of letters he wrote, in “Ever, Dirk.” (via Dirk Bogarde FB)

  • Discreet Reformer – Victim

    Dirk seized with relish on the role of Melville Farr, the successful barrister with the beautiful wife, because Victim (1961) had something important to say about a society in which the blackmailing of homosexuals was commonplace. When the film was made, Lord Wolfenden’s Committee had reported on the merits of qualified reform, but the legislature was slow to respond.

    Six years later, the Sexual Offenses Act was passed, partially decriminalizing homosexual acts in private between consenting males aged 21 or over. In 1968 the Earl of Arran, who had introduced the legislation in the House of Lords, wrote to Dirk, acknowledging the part the latter had played in helping to change the climate for the better. The brief but gratifying letter is reproduced on these pages by kind permission of the writer’s son, the 9th Earl.