Film director and screenwriter

Born: June 11, 1922; Died: July 25, 2011.

Michael Cacoyannis, who has died aged 89 of complications from a heart attack and chronic respiratory problems, was a Cyprus born-filmmaker and screenwriter who directed the 1964 film classic Zorba the Greek, starring Anthony Quinn and Alan Bates.

Cacoyannis won multiple awards and worked with such well-known actors as Melina Mercouri, Irene Papas, Katharine Hepburn, Vanessa Redgrave, and Candice Bergen. But he was best known internationally for the Academy Award-winning Zorba the Greek - the 1964 adaptation of Nikos Kazantzakis’ novel – joining up with composer Mikis Theodorakis, whose score for the movie remains an enduring Greek anthem.

In the black-and-white movie, an Englishman (Bates) travels to Crete to visit a coal mine he inherited. Alexis Zorbas (Quinn) is his larger-than-life cook and fixer.

It won two technical awards at the 1965 Oscars, while Lila Kedrova won for best supporting actress. But Cacoyannis and Quinn both lost out to My Fair Lady, which was voted best picture that year.

Cacoyannis was born in the Cypriot port of Limassol, when the island was still a British colony. He studied law in London, but soon followed his interest in the arts, working for the BBC’s Greek service, studying drama, and eventually getting acting parts in the theatre.After moving to Athens, he made his debut as a director with Windfall in Athens in 1954, which was selected as the opening attraction for the 1954 Edinburgh Film Festival and won that year’s Diploma of Merit. It went on to become an international hit.

Two years later, he won a Golden Globe for best foreign language film for Stella, starring Mercouri as a femme fatale. A Girl in Black (1956) and A Matter of Dignity (1958) followed and Elektra, starring Irene Papas (1961) also won the Edinburgh diploma of merit.

He put together an impressive ensemble of players – including Papas, Katharine Hepburn, Vanessa Redgrave and Geneviève Bujold – in his film of Euripides’s The Trojan Women (1971) but by then his career had flagged.

He left Greece after the Colonels took power in 1967 and put more of his efforts into the stage. He was director of the Abbey in Dublin in the early 1970s and brought a production of Oedipus Rex to the Edinburgh Festival in 1974.

Cacoyannis never married and is survived by his sister.