James Foley, director of films including “Glengarry Glen Ross,” “At Close Range” and “Fear,” died at his home in Los Angeles earlier this week.
He died after a year-long struggle with brain cancer, according to a rep.
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Foley worked with stars including Sean Penn, Madonna, Al Pacino and Halle Berry, and specialized in atmosphere-soaked, noir-adjacent stories.
His first feature was 1984’s musical romance drama “Reckless,” starring Daryl Hannah and Aidan Quinn. Foley followed that with “At Close Range,” starring Penn and Christopher Walken in a neo-noir that included the Madonna song “Live to Tell.” Madonna was married to Penn at the time, and Foley went on to work with Madonna several times, directing music videos and her feature “Who’s That Girl.” The screwball comedy bombed, and Foley told FilmInk, “It was a major life experience. That first failure is so shocking.”
“Glengarry Glen Ross” was one of his most high-profile films, and the adaptation of the David Mamet play garnered Pacino an Oscar nomination and a Golden Globe award. The all-star cast also included Jack Lemmon, Alec Baldwin, Ed Harris and Alan Arkin.
Foley also directed the two sequels to “Fifty Shades of Grey” and 12 episodes of the series “House of Cards.”
His 1990 crime thriller “After Dark, My Sweet,” starring Rachel Ward, Jason Patric and Bruce Dern, is remembered as a significant example of California film noir. “Director-cowriter James Foley has given this near-perfect adaptation of a Jim Thompson novel a contempo setting and emotional realism that make it as potent as a snakebite,” said Variety‘s review.
Foley’s other features included Pacino’s “Two Bits,” “Confidence,” “Perfect Stranger,” starring Berry and Willis, “The Chamber” and “The Corrupter” with Chow-yun Fat and Mark Wahlberg.
In television, he directed an episode of the original “Twin Peaks,” and went on to direct for “House of Cards,” “Billions,” “Wayward Pines” and “Hannibal.”
Born in Brooklyn, he met “Harold and Maude” director Hal Ashby while showing a student film while in grad school at USC. “I’ll never know whether he was just being polite, but he told me that he liked it and that he was going to form a company to produce other people’s movies and asked me what I wanted to do. He said that I could write something and direct it,” Foley told FilmInk. Though Ashby’s company ran out of money, the connection was enough to get him hired to direct his first feature, “Reckless.”
Survivors include a brother, Kevin (Mary Anne Myers), sisters Eileen and Jo Ann and nephew Quinn (fiancée Antea Kalinic). He was predeceased by his brother Gerald (Ann Marie Quinn Foley).
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