He has been described by the Toronto International Film Festival as a “talented, multi-faceted journeyman director in the tradition of Leo McCarey or Robert Wise.”[4]
After graduating in English Literature from University College, University of Toronto, Kotcheff began his television career at the age of twenty-four when he joined the staff of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, with television in its infancy. Kotcheff was the youngest director on the staff of the CBC, where he worked for two years on shows such as General Motors Theatre, Encounter, First Performance and On Camera.
British television
In 1958, he left Canada to live and work in the United Kingdom. He was soon followed by his compatriot Sydney Newman, who had been the Director of Drama at the CBC and then to the United Kingdom to take up a similar position at ABC Weekend TV, one of the franchise holders of the ITV network who also produced much of the nationally networked programming for the channel.
At ABC, Newman was producer of the popular Armchair Theatre anthology drama programme, on which Kotcheff worked as a director between 1957 and 1960. Kotcheff was responsible for directing some of the best-remembered instalments. During Underground, transmitted live on 30 November 1958, Kotcheff was required to cope when one of the actors, Gareth Jones, playing a character who was to die of a heart attack, suddenly died of one himself, off-camera, while between scenes, leaving Peter Bowles and others to improvise.
Kotcheff also worked in the theatre.[17] He directed the original 1964-65 West End production of the musical Maggie May at the Adelphi Theatre,[18] which won the Ivor Novello Award for Outstanding Score of the Year and the Critics' Poll as Best New British Musical.[19]
Kotcheff directed the Australian film Wake in Fright (USA: Outback, 1971; re-released with its original title, 2012).[20] It won much critical acclaim in Europe, and was Australia's entry at the Cannes Film Festival. (In 2009, Wake in Fright was re-released on DVD and Blu-ray disc in a fully restored version.)
He wrote and directed The Trial of Sinyavsky and Daniel (1975) for Canadian television and was a production consultant on Why Shoot the Teacher? (1977).
In the 1990s, Kotcheff returned to directing for TV, working on various American series such as Red Shoe Diaries, and Buddy Faro as well as Casualty in the UK.
Kotcheff lives in Beverly Hills with his wife Laifun. They have two children: Alexandra, a filmmaker, and Thomas, a composer and pianist. He has three children from his previous marriage to actress Sylvia Kay: Aaron, Katrina and Joshua.[citation needed] Ted Kotcheff is also vegetarian.[22]
In February 2016, Kotcheff applied for Bulgarian citizenship via the Bulgarian consulate in Los Angeles,[23][24] and was granted this during a visit to Bulgaria in March.[25]
Given his Macedonian heritage, Kotcheff served on the board of directors of the Macedonian Arts Council. According to Kotcheff, there is not a difference between Macedonia and Bulgaria.[26]
^Loring M. Danforth The Macedonian Conflict: Ethnic Nationalism in a Transnational World, pp. 85-89: "The largest number of Slavic-speaking immigrants from Macedonia came to the United States during the first decades of the twentieth century, at which time they identified themselves either as Bulgarians or as Macedonian-Bulgarians".
