---
name: "Charles Jarrott"
canonical: "https://film.one/person/charles-jarrott"
roles: ["Director"]
born: "16 June 1927"
died: "4 March 2011"
reviewed_on_fi1m: 1
average_as: "director"
average_over: 1
updated: "2026-09-20T05:19:45.367513+00:00"
licence: "© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL."
---

# Charles Jarrott

Director. Born 16 June 1927 in London, England. Died 4 March 2011.

## Details

- **Work:** Director
- **Born:** 16 June 1927, London, England
- **Died:** 4 March 2011
- **Golden Globes:** 1 Golden Globe (1 won)
- **Elsewhere:** https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Jarrott, https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q951493, https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0418986/, https://www.themoviedb.org/person/29646

## Fi1m on Charles Jarrott

> Charles Jarrott came to the cinema from live television and never quite left it: two people in a well-dressed room, speaking good lines well, until the scene ends. Handsome, well-spoken, slow, and worth an evening only when the actor is worth it.

A king wants a woman. He tells her so in a room. She tells him what she thinks of that, in the same room, and then Richard Marden cuts to the next room, where somebody else explains what has happened at court. That is *Anne of the Thousand Days* (1969), Charles Jarrott's first feature, for 145 minutes. The break with Rome, the fall of a chancellor, the oath put to More and Fisher: none of it is shown, all of it is reported. Richard Burton is Henry, Geneviève Bujold is Anne, and whenever she is on screen the film has a pulse. Whenever she is not, it has a script.

The habit was learned honestly. Jarrott acted in repertory at Nottingham, went to Canada in 1953 to direct television plays for the CBC under Sydney Newman, and came home to the BBC for *Armchair Theatre* and *The Wednesday Play*, where he handled Pinter and Wesker. In 1969 Hal B. Wallis brought him to Hollywood and gave him the Tudors. He said of the move that "if you've done live TV, you can do anything. It teaches you the most enormous discipline." He is right about the discipline. Everyone in *Anne* is in the right place, saying the right line, at the right moment.

Wallis kept him for *Mary, Queen of Scots* (1971), with Vanessa Redgrave and Glenda Jackson, and then Jarrott took on a musical, *Lost Horizon* (1973), which failed badly enough to bend the rest of his career. *The Other Side of Midnight* (1977) followed, and after that he worked mostly in television films until his last credit in 2002. It is hard not to feel he had gone back to where he was most at ease.

What he could do was get a performance. Bujold's Anne has a temper and a brain, and a director who could not see actors would not have let her keep either. What he could not do, or did not want to, was stage an event as anything but a conversation about it. Critics at the time found no style in him at all. We would put it less unkindly: he had a style, and it was television's, and a cinema screen exposes it. By the middle hour of *Anne* we were checking how long was left, and we felt mean about it, because everyone on screen was plainly trying and the words were good. It is a peculiar kind of boredom, the sort you feel in a well-run meeting.

Watch *Anne of the Thousand Days* at home, where it looks like what it is: a very good television play with better frocks. Stay for Bujold. If you find yourself admiring the tapestries on the wall behind her, that is not entirely your fault.

## Biography

Charles Jarrott (16 June 1927 – 4 March 2011) was a British film and television director. Born in London, he served in the Royal Navy during the Second World War. After the war he joined the Nottingham Repertory Theatre as an actor and later worked as a stage manager and director. In 1953 he moved to Canada, where he began directing television plays.

Jarrott's feature film debut was *Anne of the Thousand Days* (1969), produced by Hal B. Wallis. He followed this with *Mary, Queen of Scots* (1971). He won the Golden Globe Award for Best Director for *Anne of the Thousand Days*. His other feature films include *Lost Horizon* (1973), *The Last Flight of Noah's Ark* (1980) and *Condorman* (1981). He also directed numerous television films and series from the 1950s to the early 2000s.

*Sources: en.wikipedia.org, theguardian.com, nytimes.com, imdb.com.*

## On Fi1m (1)

- *Anne of the Thousand Days* (1969), Fi1m 60, Director — [page](https://film.one/film/anne-of-the-thousand-days.md)

## Complete filmography (75)

Every credit, newest first. Titles without a page can be requested for review on the HTML page.

- *Turn of Faith* (2002), Director
- *The Christmas List* (1997), Director of Photography, Director
- *The Secret Life of Algernon* (1997), Writer, Director
- *At the Midnight Hour* (1995), Director
- *A Promise Kept: The Oksana Baiul Story* (1994), Director
- *Treacherous Beauties* (1994), Director
- *A Stranger in the Mirror* (1993), Director
- *Morning Glory* (1993), Screenplay
- *Trade Winds* (1993), series, Director
- *Lady Boss* (1992), series, Director
- *Yes Virginia, There Is a Santa Claus* (1991), Director
- *Changes* (1991), Director
- *Lucy & Desi: Before the Laughter* (1991), Director
- *Night of the Fox* (1990), Director
- *Judith Krantz's Till We Meet Again* (1989), series, Director
- *Till We Meet Again* (1989), Director
- *Poor Little Rich Girl: The Barbara Hutton Story* (1989), series, Director
- *The Woman He Loved* (1988), Director
- *I Would Be Called John: Pope John XXIII* (1987), Director
- *Lyndon Johnson* (1987), Director
- *Ike* (1986), Director
- *The Boy in Blue* (1986), Director
- *A Married Man* (1983), series, Director
- *The Amateur* (1981), Director
- *Condorman* (1981), Director
- *The Last Flight of Noah's Ark* (1980), Director
- *The Other Side of Midnight* (1977), Director
- *The Littlest Horse Thieves* (1976), Director
- *The Dove* (1974), Director
- *Lost Horizon* (1973), Director
- *Mary, Queen of Scots* (1971), Director
- *Anne of the Thousand Days* (1969), Director — Fi1m 60, [page](https://film.one/film/anne-of-the-thousand-days.md)
- *Male of the Species* (1969), series, Director
- *ITV Saturday Night Theatre* (1969), series, Director
- *Male of the Species* (1969), Director
- *If There Weren't Any Blacks You'd Have to Invent Them* (1968), Director
- *A Case of Libel* (1968), Director
- *The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde* (1968), Director
- *Haunted* (1967), series, Director
- *The Basement* (1967), Director
- *What's Wrong with Humpty Dumpty?* (1967), Director
- *The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde* (1967), Director
- *NET Playhouse* (1966), series, Director
- *Light the Blue Touch Paper* (1966), Director
- *The Noise Stopped* (1966), Director
- *Cock, Hen and Courting Pit* (1966), Director
- *Silent Song* (1966), Director
- *Tea Party* (1965), Director
- *The Big Breaker* (1964), Director
- *Thursday Theatre* (1964), series, Director
- *The Wednesday Play* (1964), series, Director
- *Theatre 625* (1964), series, Director
- *The Life of Galileo* (1964), Director
- *Long Past Glory* (1963), Director
- *Festival* (1963), series, Director
- *The Invasion* (1963), Director
- *Nothing to Pay* (1962), Director
- *Time to Remember* (1962), Director
- *Out of This World* (1962), series, Director
- *Tune On the Old Tax Fiddle* (1961), Director
- *The Trouble with Our Ivy* (1961), Director
- *The Rose Affair* (1961), Director
- *The Man Out There* (1961), Director
- *Armchair Mystery Theatre* (1960), series, Director
- *Counter-Attack* (1960), series, Director
- *Doctor Kabil* (1959), Director
- *Worm in the Bud* (1959), Director
- *Edgar Wallace Mysteries* (1959), series, Director
- *The Unforeseen* (1958), series, Director
- *Hawkeye and the Last of the Mohicans* (1957), series, as Dying Man, Major Moncrief
- *Armchair Theatre* (1956), series, Director
- *Folio* (1955), series, as Ross
- *The Wonderful World of Disney* (1954), series, Director
- *On Camera* (1954), series, Director
- *General Motors Theatre* (1952), series, Director

## Awards

### Golden Globes — 1 won

- 1970: Best Director (won), for *Anne of the Thousand Days*

*From Wikidata, which records wins more completely than nominations.*

---
© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL. Canonical: https://film.one/person/charles-jarrott