Ken Loach is one of the UK's most successful filmmakers working in television and film in a career that has spanned over forty years.
After two years in the RAF Loach read law at St Peter's College, Oxford before kicking off his career as an actor working at the theatre.
But it wasn't long before he moved behind the counter and worked on a episode of Z Cars during the early sixties.
Throughout the sixties he worked steadily in television working on Diary of a Young Man, Up the Junction and Coming Out Party.
But it was his social issue television drama Cathy Come Home that really brought him to the attention of audiences.
The film follows a couple Cathy and Reg who have moved into a modern home and have a child. But after Reg is injured and loses his job.
The pair are evicted by bailiffs and they face a life of poverty and unemployment squatting in empty houses and shelter. Cathy has her children taken away by social services.
Cathy Come Home was a massive success and was watched by twelve million people and Loach marked his arrival. Over forty years after it was screened the film remains one of the best television movies of all time.
Off the back of Cathy Come Home Loach moved into cinema with Poor Cow, an adaptation of Nell Dunn's novel of the same name.
But it was 1969 that brought Loach's most famous movie in the form of Kes.
Bullied at school and ignored and abused at home by his indifferent mother and older brother, Billy Casper (David Bradley), a 15-year-old working-class Yorkshire boy, tames and trains his pet kestrel falcon whom he names Kes.
Helped and encouraged by his English teacher Mr. Farthing (Colin Welland) and his fellow students, Billy finally finds a positive purpose to his unhappy existence, until tragedy strikes.
The movie was a critical success and remains one of the best British movies.
Throughout the seventies and eighties he struggled to repeat that success but he continued to work, splitting his time between movies and television.
He returned to prominence in 2006 with The Wind That Shakes the Barley, a movie about the Irish War of Independence and the subsequent Irish Civil War during the 1920s, which went on to win the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival
Looking For Eric is released this week and it sees the filmmaker team up with Manchester United football legend Eric Cantona.
Eric the postman is slipping through his own fingers...
His chaotic family, his wild stepsons, and the cement mixer in the front garden don’t help, but it is Eric’s own secret that drives him to the brink.
Can he face Lily, the woman he once loved? Despite outrageous efforts and misplaced goodwill from his football fan mates, Eric continues to sink.
In desperate times it takes a spliff and a special friend to challenge Eric to journey into the most perilous territory of all - the past.
Looking For Eric is out now.
FemaleFirst Helen Earnshaw
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