Hugh Hudson (born 25 August 1936) is an English Academy Award-nominated film director.
Hudson was born in London, the elder son of Michael Donaldson-Hudson and Jacynth Ellerton from a family of affluent landowners at Cheswardine Hall, Shropshire; he was educated at Eton and Harvard University. He then embarked on a rewarding career in advertising, producing, alongside fellow British director Ridley Scott, many prizewinning adverts. This allowed him entrance to the world of film-making; his first job was as a second-unit director on Alan Parker's Midnight Express.
Catching the eye of producer David Puttnam, Hudson was put in charge of what is his now regarded as his most accomplished and well-known film, Chariots of Fire (1981), the story of two British track runners, one a devout Christian and the other an ambitious Jew, in the run-up to the 1924 Olympic Games. The film is said to have revitalized the fading British film industry, and it won four Academy Awards, including Best Picture; Hudson earned a nomination for Best Director.
After this success, Hudson's later productions were largely disappointing, including the only partially successful Greystoke - The Legend of Tarzan, Lord of the Apes (1984), and the notorious flop Revolution (1985), which depicted the American War of Independence, and which crippled what could have been a prosperous career in Hollywood for Hudson. Instead, his film output since has been scarce and uninspiring.
In 2006 he was reported to be working on a historical epic based on the life of the monotheistic Egyptian Pharaoh Akhenaten. The film supports the controversial theory that Akhenaten is the same person as the biblical Moses.
He is planning to direct an adaptation of Haruki Murakami's book Norwegian Wood in the near future.[citation needed]
In 2003, he married actress Maryam d'Abo.
