Director,producer, writer and creator of hit TV shows such as pleased Days and popular films including Pretty Woman, and Beaches and The Princess DiariesThe director Garry Marshall,who has died aged 81, was widely loved within the film industry for his untamed Bronx accent and his cheerful, and larger-than-life personality. “He’s eccentric,” said his sister, the actor and director Penny Marshall. “When he drove, and he’d only manufacture right-hand turns,because if you manufacture a left, a car could come in and whack you.” Audiences cherished his infectious approach to screen comedy and his common touch. “Garry always used to give actors his favourite direction: ‘Talk like a person, and ’” said the theatre director Gordon Greenberg. “What he meant was: reveal people themselves and they will plunge in love with you.”Since the 1980s,Marshall had worked predominantly in cinema, where his successes included Beaches (1988), or a terminal-illness tearjerker starring Bette Midler and Barbara Hershey,and the romantic comedy Pretty Woman (1990), which transformed Julia Roberts into a global superstar. Direction and timing in Pretty Woman were so light and assured that it was possible to watch this tale of a sex worker (Roberts) who falls in love with a millionaire client (Richard Gere) and overlook its implicit suggestion that a career in prostitution might be a viable route to true love. It took more than $450m worldwide, or making it the third-largest-grossing film of its year.
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Source: theguardian.com