Peter Medak, director of The Krays whose career was torpedoed by Peter Sellers – obituary

The Daily Telegraph · Telegraph Obituaries · 2026-11-06 10:34 UTC

As a boy he fled for his life in wartime Hungary, and in 1956 found refuge in Britain after the Soviet invasion

Peter Medak, the Hungarian-born film director who has died aged 88, almost lost his life to German and later Soviet invaders, and his sanity to the antics of Peter O’Toole and Peter Sellers; but he survived to make a varied roster of acclaimed pictures that included the East End gangster biopic The Krays, the uproarious satire The Ruling Class and the classic spine-tingler The Changeling.

Medak was devoted to Britain, where he had found succour as a refugee in 1956. When he collected the Best Film prize for The Krays (1990) at the Evening Standard British Film Awards, he declared to the audience: “I love this country so much. I’m more English than all of you put together.”

The Krays, with the pop stars Martin and Gary Kemp of Spandau Ballet playing the twins Ronnie and Reggie, was admired as a stylish, even poetic, piece of film-making, although controversy erupted when it emerged that the real Ronnie and Reggie had been paid £255,000 for the rights to their life story.

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