Liverpool native Alan Clarke got his start in the film business in Canada, where he studied acting and directing. Upon returning to England he got a job at ITV, then moved over to the BBC in 1969. He worked mostly in television, but he made a couple of feature films that got attention for their portrayal of the gritty and occasionally violent life of the British working class, notably Scum (1979) and Rita, Sue and Bob Too (1987), about aimless, sex-obsessed teenagers in a housing project. Another of his slice-of-life films was the hard-hitting made-for-TV movie Made in Britain (1982), with an early performance by Tim Roth as a violent, racist skinhead.Alan Clarke died of cancer in 1990