‘Fifty Shades’ and ‘House of Cards’ director James Foley dead at 71
James Foley, the director of Fifty Shades of Grey: Fifty Shades Darker and Fifty Shades Freed, as well as House of Cards, has died aged 71.
The filmmaker passed after a year-long struggle with brain cancer, according to a rep, who revealed that Foley “died peacefully in his sleep earlier this week” after a “years-long struggle”, his publicist confirmed with The Hollywood Reporter.
Throughout the course of his career, Foley worked with stars such as Al Pacino and Halle Berry. He has directed episodes of Twin Peaks, Hannibal and House of Cards, and also Fear.
Notably, he also directed Who’s That Girl, starring Madonna. After it bombed at the box office, Foley noted of the humbling, “It was a major life experience. That first failure is so shocking.”
Foley was a close confidant of the superstar. He directed many of her music videos under the name Peter Percher. The director was also the best man at her 1985 wedding to former husband Sean Penn.
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.
His film career began with a chance meeting in his last year at film school, after which he graduated from New York University and then USC in Los Angeles. The right person at the right time—Harold and Maude director Hal Ashby—attended a film party his friends were showing, which projected one of Foley’s projects onto a wall.
“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.
Foley is survived by his brother, Kevin, sisters Eileen and Jo Ann and nephew Quinn.
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