English filmmaker Ken Russell was BOTD in 1927. Born in Southhampton, Hampshire, he was a cadet at the Nautical College at Pangbourne and later joined the British Merchant Navy. After training as an electrician in the Royal Air Force, he became interested in the arts, attempting careers in acting, ballet and photography. He became a documentary director for the BBC, making biopics about composers Béla Bartók, Claude Debussy and Frederick Delius. He rose to stardom with his 1969 film of D. H. Lawrence’s novel Women in Love, from a screenplay by Larry Kramer. Lusciously filmed and sexually bold for its time, it won an Oscar for its star Glenda Jackson, and is notable for a nude wrestling scene between Alan Bates and Oliver Reed. His next film The Devils, a fever-dream about a medieval witch-hunt, was butchered by censors for its graphic sexual violence. He cast gay ballet star Rudolf Nureyev in the biopic Valentino, exploring the film star’s reputed affair with dancer Vaslav Nijinsky. His filmography also includes the Jazz Age musical The Boyfriend; the rock opera Tommy; the musical biopic Lisztomania, the body horror thriller Altered States; Gothic, an imagined portrait of Frankenstein author Mary Shelley; and Salome’s Last Dance, a drama about Oscar Wilde and Lord Alfred Douglas attending a performance of Wilde’s play Salome. An unapologetic provocateur, his films frequently angered critics and censors, notably Whore, an unvarnished portrait of sex work that was unfavourably compared to Pretty Woman. Married four times and with eight children, he died in 2011 aged 84. He earns Honorary SuperGay status for his ravishing visual style and cheerfully graphic portraits of every known sexual perversion.