Bryan Forbes at 100: remembering the Whistle down the Wind and The Stepford Wives director on his centenary

At the end of 2011, I drove out to Virginia Water with a colleague, to collect a film donation to the BFI National Archive. Meeting actor-writer-director Bryan Forbes at his Surrey home is a treasured memory; he was a welcoming and generous host and was happy to share memories from his long and prestigious career. The films we retrieved were his 16mm home movies, and cataloguing them gave me a wonderful insight into his life and career, from on-set footage of his films to lively social gatherings at his home where he and wife Nanette Newman entertained their many friends, including Peter Sellers, Richard Attenborough and Elton John.

Luckily for us, Forbes – who was born 100 years ago on 22 July 1926 – was meticulous in archiving his films and papers. The first tranche of material came to the BFI in 1985 and included 35mm prints of his own films, screenplays and signed copies of his books, now housed in the BFI Reuben Library. The bulk of his papers were presented to the Margaret Herrick Library in Los Angeles in the 1990s and a final acquisition came to the BFI after his death in 2013. This last donation consisted of a collection of scrapbooks filled with cuttings, premiere tickets and other memorabilia of each of Forbes’s films, as well as boxes of unrealised screenplays that reveal the many directions in which his career might have gone.

While Forbes only directed 14 feature films (and a handful of television productions), he left behind a very diverse filmography. He moved effortlessly from comedies to thrillers to musicals, as well as making a suite of social realist films in the 1960s that are less easy to pigeonhole. Whistle down the Wind (1961), his debut as director, remains a much-loved feature about the innocence of childhood, for which he made the bold decision to use non-professional young actors from rural Lancashire, where the film was shot. The L-Shaped Room (1962) became his second project, based on his own adaptation of Lynne Reid Banks’ novel. With a strong female lead, the film helped to usher in an era of more challenging roles for women as the 1960s began to swing, while also giving a poignant warning of the consequences of the changing morality.

From big budget Hollywood films like King Rat (1965) and The Stepford Wives (1975) to modest but affecting features like The Whisperers (1967), Forbes never allowed effects or dramatic visuals to overshadow his characters, focusing instead on their feelings and relationships. As an experienced performer himself, it’s no surprise that he became such a sensitive director of actors. Several stars who worked with him have spoken warmly about the experience, and the deep connection they felt to the roles they played. Leslie Caron’s Jane in The L-Shaped Room is pregnant and alone in London; the actress helped shape the character through her discussions with Forbes, who responded to her desire to make Jane less passive. She also embraced the opportunity to leave behind the glamour of Hollywood and play a serious role: “It was stern and unrelenting… [but] I really did enjoy it when I felt a scene had gone well,” she later reflected. Caron won a British Academy Award and was nominated for an Oscar for the film.

Richard Attenborough, with whom Forbes formed production company Beaver Films, maintained that Forbes had inspired his best screen performance in the 1964 film Seance on a Wet Afternoon; his co-star, Kim Stanley, who played a failing medium, also received an Academy Award nomination for the film. Lamenting the neglect of Forbes’s 1971 film The Raging Moon, its star Malcolm McDowell recalled how invested he was in the role of Bruce, a young man who becomes paraplegic. “I was very very fond of that character,” he reminisced, “I understood him and I really loved him. It’s one of my favourite performances.”

The Raging Moon was also the film that Forbes himself was most proud of. The story of a relationship that develops between two disabled people living in a home, it chimes with Forbes’s preoccupation with foregrounding and humanising those in society who are often sidelined or ignored. From the unmarried mother facing a disapproving society, to the elderly woman of The Whisperers, struggling to survive and battling mental health issues, Forbes portrayed the strength of these figures rather than the frailty.

In the late 1960s, Forbes became head of EMI and began a tenure that saw him commission 18 British features, including The Railway Children (1970) and Joseph Losey’s The Go-Between (1971). The experience was not a happy one due to behind-the-scenes politics and he looked forward to returning to directing; yet he found the industry much changed and increasingly turned to writing, adding a string of successful novels to his already lengthy CV. He did bring two major titles to the screen in the 1970s: the Hollywood adaptation of Ira Levin’s The Stepford Wives (1975) and the lavish Cinderella musical The Slipper and the Rose (1976), very different productions that reflected the breadth of his creative interests.

Forbes’s marriage to Nanette Newman was one of the most successful in show business, lasting from 1955 until his death. Family was clearly of the utmost importance to him and if he had to travel for a shoot, Nanette and their daughters would usually go too. He often cast Nanette in his films: she took lead roles in The Wrong Box (1966), The Raging Moon and The Stepford Wives, and had smaller parts in several other features.

Years of smoking eventually caught up with Forbes and he developed emphysema which took his life at the age of 86. The year before he died, the BFI awarded him a Fellowship, an honour that was clearly much appreciated, judging by the effusive interview he gave with Simon Callow at the time. Forbes comes across as someone who combined intellect with geniality, and integrity with charm, qualities perhaps not always associated with great directors. Over the years, I have met several writers and filmmakers who met Forbes at formative moments in their careers and expressed how generous he was with his time and his support for their efforts. Such kindnesses may not earn one a place in the pantheon of great auteurs, but for Forbes, the personal touch was a vital element both in his work and his private life.

Josephine Botting’s BFI Film Classic on Whistle down the Wind is published on 3 September 2026.