British Cinematographer Worked With Mike Leigh, Was 77

Dick Pope, the veteran British cinematographer who worked on 11 movies with director Mike Leigh, has died Tuesday, the British Society of Cinematographers said in a statement. He was 77.

No cause of death was given, but Leigh told Indiewire that Pope had undergone “major heart surgery” before work began on Hard Truths, their last collaboration that premiered at the Toronto Film Festival last month.  

Pope received Oscar nominations for his work on Leigh’s Mr Turner and the mystery The Illusionist by director Neil Burger. Pope and Leigh also worked together on movies like Life Is Sweet in 1990, Naked, Topsy-Turvey, Vera Drake and Secrets & Lies.

In a 2019 interview with Film Comment, Pope talked about his decades of work with Leigh, with a reference to their movie coming out at the time, Peterloo.

“It’s very difficult to take Peterloo out of all the other work we’ve done together, because for me it all adds up to each other, and we have shorthands as to how we look at situations. This film took three-and-a-half years to make, but all of Mike’s films do, really. I’ve always said you wouldn’t get rich in waiting to work with Mike, so I often go out and do plenty of other stuff. Otherwise I’d be sitting at home for a long time,” he said.

Born in Bromley, Kent in 1947, Pope began his career with documentaries, especially the World In Action series. That lent Pope’s camera work a realism that he brought to early TV dramas starting in the early 1980s, which included a BAFTA nomination for his work on Porterhouse Blue, the 1987 comedy mini-series for Channel Four and starring David Jason and Ian Richardson.

Pope eventually worked with a host of big name directors like Beeban Kidron, Mike Newell, Christopher McQuarrie, Barry Levinson, Richard Linklater, Gurinder Chadha, Chiwetel Ejiofor and Edward Norton. For his work, Pope earned the Camerimage Golden Frog a record three times.  

“Dick had a reputation for being a wonderful collaborator and someone who was passionate about the artform of cinematography. He was keen to embrace new technologies and ideas while also ensuring the skills and crafts of those that came before him weren’t lost,” the British Society of Cinematographers added in its statement on Pope’s death.