Filmmaker Lesley Paterson’s husband Simon Marshall has died aged 54 after losing his pancreatic cancer battle.
Filmmaker Lesley Paterson’s husband Simon Marshall has died aged 54 after losing his pancreatic cancer battle
The husband-and-wife team co-wrote the script for the brutal 2022 anti-war movie ‘All Quiet on the Western Front’, already considered a classic.
Lesley launched a crowd-funding drive last year after her husband and creative partner was diagnosed with stage four pancreatic cancer.
Their ‘All Quiet on the Western Front’ adaptation won four Oscars and seven Baftas.
Lesley – who also represented Scotland and Great Britain as a triathlete – said on social media about Simon’s passing: “My darling boy passed away yesterday. He was my soul and my light.
“The pain is real but I will take this suffering and turn it into beauty in honour of his spirit. Love you all.”
Lesley told in February how she had been charting his cancer fight on film, saying: “Even within this journey there’s a shining light by making a documentary. Purpose and meaning.”
In March the writer told the Sunday Times they had been hit with the news about her husband’s diagnosis while celebrating the announcement that their planned next film – an adaptation of ‘Man’s Search for Meaning’ about the holocaust, was getting the full funding it needed.
She said: “Sometimes it’s sunk in and sometimes it hasn’t. I think what you learn in life, whether it’s from sport or movies or whatever, is that no one has it easy and we are all going to have times where s*** is thrown at us.
“You have to just breathe and say: ‘I can do this’.”
Simon was having an experimental drug treatment after they raised more than $120,000 on crowd funding.
Lesley met her future husband at Loughborough University, near Leicester, and after marrying in Perthshire they moved to California where Simon started teaching and Lesley completed a master’s degree in film and theatre.