Apted's adaptable aptitude

Versatile British director Michael Apted has made everything from country music biopics to Bond films and social documentaries. He talks to Donald Clarkeabout staying flexible

Michael Apted is one of that generation of English film-makers - those born sometime in the 1940s and trained in British television during the 1960s - who seem willing to try their hand at directing just about anything. Didn't he do the last Harry Potter film? No. That was Mike Newell. Was he behind that strange adaptation of Lolita? Heavens, no. That was the flashier Adrian Lyne.

Apted, now 66, is the cinematic handyman who gave us Gorillas in the Mist, Coal Miner's Daughter, Enigma and the James Bond film, The World is Not Enough. He is also the co-creator and continuing custodian of the classic series of documentaries that, beginning with Seven Up! in 1964, has revisited a disparate group of British citizens every seven years. This week he brings us Ioan Gruffudd as William Wilberforce, the man most responsible for the abolition of the British slave trade, in the earnest, angry Amazing Grace. There is barely a gap in Apted's CV since he first arrived at Granada Television more than 40 years ago. He must have had little chance to live a normal life in those busy decades.

"I paid for it," Apted, a tall man with a long face, says slightly mordantly. "I had one marriage break-up, and that was probably related to that, though I have a new family now. But when I first emigrated to LA it was very difficult for my wife. She was suddenly cast in this difficult environment. And maybe my working so much didn't help."

His current task is to sell us Amazing Grace. The film, whose release coincides with the 200th anniversary of the eventual passing of Wilberforce's abolition bill, has had an interesting history.

Philip Anschutz, the American billionaire and conservative Christian, has long sought to develop a film on the subject through his company, Walden Media. Wilberforce, himself a committed Christian, who almost abandoned parliament for the religious life, does indeed sound like a suitable target for Anschutz's attentions.

"Getting it out in time for the anniversary was a motivating force," Apted explains. "It really was a hobby-horse of Anschutz's. I had, in fact, been one of the many who turned it down. Eventually I was asked: what would it take to get you to do it? I thought the scripts were too much like biopics and the stress on religion was a little too great. I suggested it be rewritten totally to be a story about the politics that had a heroic spin to it."

Sure enough, the film does focus fairly closely on Wilberforce's 20-year campaign to persuade parliament of the evils of the slave trade. But Apted and his screenwriter, Steven Knight, do find space to treat Wilberforce's spiritual conversion and his fascinating relationship with John Newton (Albert Finney), the former slave-ship captain who, after seeing the error of his ways, went on to write the hymn, Amazing Grace. Walden Media, producer of the Narnia films, is often described as being concerned with proselytising Christianity.

WAS APTED AWARE of any pressure to include a religious message? "No. I don't think so," he says. "I suppose at the heart of every evangelical there is a desire to proselytise. But you look at Narnia and it is quite clear they don't force the issue. They know that could alienate people. I am not religious and I am not very interested in Christianity. But I wanted to persuade Walden that I wasn't going to secularise the film. I hope I walked the tightrope, so that it didn't veer over into a faith-based film, but still touched upon his beliefs."

It is, perhaps, surprising that Amazing Grace has so little to do with the slaves themselves. The only African character in the film, played with some dignity by Youssou N'Dour, the Senegalese musician, is Oloudah Equiano, a freed slave whose writings helped sway many towards the cause.

"It is interesting. Nobody makes this criticism in America," Apted says. "But everyone is very worked up about it here. I was very determined to make a film about the politics of abolition and there really was very little African involvement there. I was less interested in making a film about slavery, because there really is no argument as to the rights and wrongs any more. If you made a film about, say, abortion, it would spur debate. But, surely, everybody is in agreement about the immorality of slavery."

Apted goes on to make the necessary point that, though the British slave trade was abolished two centuries ago, there are, according to some reports, more slaves in the world today than there were in 1807.

Apted, a lower-middle class boy from the home counties, still wears the liberal, socially concerned colours of a graduate of Granada Television's pioneering World in Action documentary strand. He originally studied law at Cambridge, but always harboured a desire to move into the entertainment industry.

"Happily, the year I left university was the year Granada suddenly decided to look for trainees," he says. "There was a real first-generation of TV people being recruited then. For two years, before the BBC finally woke up in 1966 or so, that was the most incredibly exciting place to work in British television."

It was while working on World in Action that Apted was asked to put together a one-off show that would eventually evolve into his most significant contribution to modern culture. Seven Up!, directed by Paul Almond, examined the contrasting backgrounds of 14 very different seven-year-olds, each selected by Apted. Seven years later the idea somehow emerged to trace the children and make a film on their subsequent progress. The film-makers have returned at regular intervals ever since to chronicle the differing fortunes of the group - Nick becomes a nuclear physicist, Symon works in a sausage factory, Neil battles depression - as they moved towards middle age. Two years ago, 49 Up was broadcast on ITV.

"The first episode seemed like a good idea, but it was just another job," he says. "I had about two weeks to find the kids and we have now followed them for 40 years. I am ashamed to say that, considering how important it has been to me, I had no idea what a significant project it was then."

Apted went on to direct all the subsequent episodes. I assume he maintains a dignified distance from the participants in order to maintain his objectivity.

"Oh no. I gave up on that quite a while ago," he says. "If they want help or whatever, I am there for them. Nick is coming to stay with me in LA in a few weeks to do Disneyland and all that. I gave up any pretence of objectivity years ago. You do rely on them for continued contribution, so you have to have some sort of relationship."

WHILE APTED WAS working on World in Action he continued to seek an opportunity to break into dramatic film-making. So when Mike Newell, another Granada alumnus, took a few weeks holiday from directing Coronation Street, Apted asked if he could have a go himself. He made a good fist of it and hasn't looked back since. He directed a number of episodes of the BBC's iconic Play for Today strand. He made Stardust, a fine sequel to the David Essex vehicle, That'll be the Day. Then, in 1980, he headed for the US and made Coal Miner's Daughter.

"All the big decisions in my life seem to have happened organically: leaving Granada, going freelance, going to America," he says. "I was desperate. I realised I could never create a body of work in Britain. There was no film infrastructure here. If I wanted to make movies, I had to go to America."

Coal Miner's Daughter, the story of country and western singer Loretta Lynn, won its star, Sissy Spacek, an Oscar and secured Apted's place in Hollywood. He is happy to admit that it was an unusual project for a man from Aylesbury.

"I didn't really know a thing about country music," he says. "But that was an advantage to me. Metropolitan Americans carry a lot of baggage about so-called white trash in the Appalachians. I didn't. So I went in quite fresh. I think it is, as a result, a more compassionate film than, say, Robert Altman's Nashville. That is a great film, but it is a bit condescending towards country music."

In the years that followed, Apted never found himself short of work. He has made thrillers, melodramas and comedies. Meanwhile, every seven years, he looks up the Seven Up! crew and reintroduces them to the television audience. As we speak, he is considering an offer to direct Goal! 3, the final part of a bombastic football saga (with few admirers). Yet he admits that some of life's joys did pass him by when he was staring down the camera's viewfinder.

"When you are building a career and having young kids, you have to make choices," he says. "Maybe you push the career and kids go by the wayside a little. Now I am older and have another child, I hope I am making better judgments about setting time aside. When you are young you are building a career. Now I am 66, I will have to face up to the fact that I may not be able to keep working so much. I may have to get a hobby."

He doesn't smile when he says this.

Amazing Grace is now on release