Born in Nuneaton, Warwickshire, England, Ken Loach studied law at Oxford
before becoming an actor with the university's Experimental Theatre
Club. He began his career acting in regional repertory theatre, trained
as a television director, and finally joined the BBC in the 1961. He
directed various early episodes of the popular police series Z Cars
(1962) before making his name in the Wednesday Play series, highlighting
social problems with Up the Junction (1965) and homelessness in Cathy
Come Home (1966). His debut feature film, Poor
Cow (1967), followed a young woman’s relationship with a working-class
thief. This was followed by the critical and commercial success Kes
(1969), depicting a young boy’s alienation and the release he finds
in training a young kestrel.
One of the few genuinely radical voices in the British cinema, Loach's
films to date have all shown the plight of the individual on the bottom
rung of society fighting the machinery's inexorable weight. Family Life
(1971) is the most disturbing statement yet made on film to explode
the myth of the family as a protective and supportive unit. Family Life
was the least commercially successful of Loach's early films. This,
and the depressed state of the British film industry during the 1970’s,
prevented him from making another feature for nearly a decade. Instead,
he returned to television drama. His later works continued to radiate
a social conscience, the taut Northern Ireland political drama Hidden
Agenda (1990), the working-class struggles of casual labourers in Riff-Raff
(1991) and Raining Stones (1993). Loach's next film, Ladybird, Ladybird
(1994), based on a true story, follows the plight of a single mother
to regain custody of her children. Glasgow was represented heavily in
Loach’s next two films; the romance between a Nicaraguan refugee and
a Scottish bus driver was conveyed in Carla’s
Song (1996), and the character study of a recovering alcoholic in
My Name Is Joe
(1998).
Bread and Roses (2000), shot in Los Angeles, was a denouncement of
the economic exploitation of immigrant workers. In 2001, Loach returned
to television for the Channel4 drama The
Navigators, focusing on the knock-on effect of railway privatisation
on the workers and public safety. Sweet
Sixteen (2002) was a grim document of Glasgow life, but it's ground
Loach has previously covered with My Name is Joe, and this time he did
so in a more conventional manner.
