Born December 28th, 1953
Died May 6th, 2025
James Foley, a veteran director whose films included Glengarry Glen Ross and the two Fifty Shades of Grey sequels, and who also worked on the hit television series House of Cards, has died at the age of 71.
Foley made his directorial debut with the 1984 film Reckless, a drama about a high-school romance between a rebellious, motorcycle-driving football player (Aidan Quinn) and a cheerleader (Daryl Hannah). Janet Maslin, reviewing it in the New York Times, called it “contrived and clichéd” but also said that Foley “tries hard to give the film a distinctive style”.
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Foley went on to build a distinguished career as a director of movies, television shows and music videos.
Among his most celebrated works is the 1992 film adaptation of Glengarry Glen Ross, David Mamet’s Pulitzer Prize-winning 1984 play about real estate salesmen trying to make ends meet in a tough economy. The movie, with an all-star cast that included Al Pacino, Jack Lemmon, Alec Baldwin, Ed Harris, Alan Arkin and Kevin Spacey, was critically acclaimed but did not do well at the box office.
Foley was also known for directing Fifty Shades Darker (2017) and Fifty Shades Freed (2018), the final two instalments of the Fifty Shades of Grey franchise, adapted from the second and third books of the EL James trilogy and starring Dakota Johnson and Jamie Dornan.
In an interview with the Hollywood Reporter in 2017, Foley said he was pleased that he had not been pigeonholed as a film-maker. “I think in terms of what fascinates me and what intrigues me and what I feel is engaging for the year that you spend making the movie, what’s personally engaging, not adhering to any kind of conventions,” he said.
His first foray into television was an episode of Twin Peaks in 1991
James Foley was born on December 28th, 1953, in Brooklyn, New York. His mother, Frances, managed the home; his father, James Vincent Foley, was a lawyer.
Foley grew up on Staten Island. He studied psychology at the State University of New York at Buffalo and graduated in 1974. He planned to attend medical school, but he changed his mind and decided to pursue directing instead after taking a six-week film production course at New York University. He went on to earn a master of fine arts at the University of Southern California’s School of Cinematic Arts in 1979.
Speaking to film and media studies students at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, in 2013, he recalled screening the short film he had made as part of that production course in New York. “That was the first time that something I had done got a reaction out of a lot of people,” Foley said. “From that moment on, I decided I wanted to do that again.”
His films also included At Close Range, a 1986 crime drama starring Sean Penn and Christopher Walken; the 1990 film adaptation of Jim Thompson’s crime novel After Dark, My Sweet, starring Jason Patric, Rachel Ward and Bruce Dern, which he also co-wrote; Fear (1996), starring Mark Wahlberg and Reese Witherspoon; The Chamber (1996), with Chris O’Donnell and Gene Hackman; and Perfect Stranger (2007), with Halle Berry and Bruce Willis.
Foley’s credits as a music video director included Madonna’s Live to Tell, True Blue and Papa Don’t Preach.
His first foray into television was an episode of Twin Peaks in 1991. He later directed 12 episodes in the first three series of House of Cards, the hit Netflix series, originally starring Kevin Spacey, about the underbelly of American government, adapted from a BBC series of the same name. He also directed episodes of Wayward Pines and Billions.
Foley is survived by a brother, Kevin; two sisters, Eileen and Jo Ann Foley; and a nephew, Quinn Foley. Another brother, Gerard, died before him.
“I’ve had a very fluid career of ups and downs and lefts and rights, and I always just responded to what I was interested in at the moment,” Foley told the Hollywood Reporter in 2017. “I’ve always just followed my nose, for better or for worse, sometimes for worse.” – The New York Times
