Career profiles: Sir Roger Deakins

Sir Roger Deakins, ASC, BSC reflects on his extraordinary 50-year career, from early documentaries to some of the most acclaimed films ever made

Words Oliver Webb | Top image Roger & James Deakins 

From Skyfall to Fargo, Sicario to The Shawshank Redemption, The Big Lebowski to Sid and Nancy, chances are you’ve seen a film lensed by Roger Deakins. With a career spanning 50 years, Deakins boasts an extraordinary, genre-spanning body of work, collaborating with acclaimed directors including Martin Scorsese, Denis Villeneuve, Agnieszka Holland, Sam Mendes, Norman Jewison and the Coen brothers. He has been nominated for an incredible 16 Academy Awards for best cinematography, winning twice for Blade Runner 2049 and 1917.

Ever since his last nomination for Empire of Light in 2023, he has co-hosted the podcast Team Deakins with his wife and long-term collaborator, James. And, in November 2025, he released Reflections: On Cinematography, which acts both as a memoir and a practical guide to the craft.

Torquay beginnings

Despite his now-evident eye for an iconic image, Deakins did not initially set out to pursue a career in filmmaking. “It just sort of evolved,” he begins.

“I didn’t want a nine-to-five job and so I was just looking for something else really. I went to art college, which itself was an excuse not to get a job in Torquay! And then I found photography through Roger Mayne – the great street photographer.”

Growing up, he always loved going to the movies. There were five local cinemas, as well as a film club that showed a lot of European and foreign movies. There, the young Deakins encountered films such as Alain Resnais’ Last Year in Marienbad (1961).

“I did not have a clue what it was about,” he laughs, “but I thought the way it was photographed was so interesting. I remember seeing Jean-Luc Godard’s Alphaville and Peter Watkins’ The War Game before the BBC banned it because of the profound reaction against it.”

In 1971, the National Film and Television School opened, and Deakins applied. He was denied admission due to his work not being ‘filmic’ enough – a term he admits he still doesn’t understand the true meaning of. He was finally admitted the following year, however.  “I thought documentaries were something I could potentially get into,” he says. “At school, I started shooting films for other students as well as making my own. That led to me being a cinematographer.” 

His first project at film school was a short documentary about the Salvation Army in London, which he followed with a short fiction film and another short documentary, this time about the Tiverton stag hunt in Devon. By the time he finished film school, he had shot 15 films. From there, he worked on a number of documentaries before landing his first feature, Cruel Passion (1977).

Deakins believes his documentary background helped shape his approach to filmmaking due to the way he saw and reacted to things. “I think you’re a product of everything you experience,” he explains. “I hadn’t experienced much of the world until I started working on documentaries. I travelled and met a lot of people in different cultures and that was really informative.”

War is peace

One of the first films to put Deakins on the map was 1984. Originally intending  to capture the film in black & white, he wanted to craft a look that would convey the grimness of George Orwell’s dystopian Britain. The film demanded meticulous planning, and production opted for practical effects. 

Deakins admits the joys of working with in-camera effects have been lost now almost everything is done in visual effects. “I loved getting the chance to do everything in camera on that film,” he enthuses. “We even did glass shots, which probably nobody understands how to do any more.”

Another film that relied heavily on in-camera effects was Barton Fink (1991), Deakins’ first of many collaborations with the Coen brothers. Recalling a shot of John Goodman stampeding down a hotel corridor as the building bursts into flames, he explains that, if it was made now, that sequence would be done with visual effects.

“We constructed two corridors in a large warehouse in Long Beach,” he says. “Each corridor was rigged with gas pipes with little holes in the side, so you could run the fire all the way down the corridor. The effects guys could control how far down it went on different lines of pipe. Luckily, John Goodman looked like he wanted to be sweating anyway. He was covered in fire gel for protection, as were the rest of us. Bruce Hamme (our dolly grip who was pushing the little rig I was on) and I had asbestos suits on. It was all done in camera; there weren’t any visual effects on Barton Fink at all.”

Working this way “means you have all of the elements around you, which makes it easier for the actors as well,” argues James. “I think you get more nuanced performances from them, which make for a better film.” 

Deakins points to Bob Rafelson’s Mountains of the Moon as an example. “We shot the scenes in the UK before the scenes in Africa,” he details. “Both main actors said they wished they had done the African segments first because it would have informed the aftermath of the expedition in the story. The experience of doing things on location on real sets makes a big difference.” 

A geographical oddity

In 1992, the year following the release of Barton Fink, Deakins shot the western thriller Thunderheart on location in South Dakota. It was on that production he first met script supervisor James Ellis, who would later become his wife. Since working on that film together, their collaboration has evolved.

“It’s just continued to grow and grow,” says James. “People didn’t know how we worked together in the beginning. I was doing a lot in the background, but then my role became more complex as digital came up.”

“James became part of the team,” adds Deakins. “First working with the labs and then with the DI process that came in with O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000). After that, the whole way of making films became more complicated, ironically. You would think digital would simplify everything, but it hasn’t.”

Deakins and the Coen brothers aimed to infuse O Brother, Where Art Thou? with a sepia-toned look to evoke the Great Depression era in which it is set. After strenuous testing with various types of filtration in front of the lens, they chose to digitally colour grade the film in post-production. It marked the first time digital technology had been used to alter every frame of a feature film.

As well as pioneering the DI process, Deakins is renowned for his motivated approach to lighting. His guiding principle is: keep it simple. “I don’t overcomplicate things,” he states. “It’s about what the story is, and each story might require something completely different. You must always react to the script and the circumstances, the discussions with the director and everybody around you. It is an instinctive reaction that ends up with the image.”

Filming The Shawshank Redemption (1994) proved particularly challenging when it came to lighting. In Reflections: On Cinematography, Deakins observes that fellow cinematographers thought it involved little lighting and looked more like a documentary. This wasn’t the case. “Every interior had to be lit,” he reveals. “There was no natural light for most of the interiors because it was too dark. It takes a lot of effort just to make a film look simple sometimes.”

Something else Deakins keeps simple is his camera choice. He admits he just about always works with ARRI ARRIFLEX. “My lens choice has changed a bit as new lenses have come along and have become faster, cleaner and more lightweight,” he says. “I am very simple when it comes to equipment really and just get what I need. I like the cleanest image possible.”

Team Deakins

When it comes to cinematography’s rules, Deakins argues that they need to be learnt – and then dismissed when necessary. “Rules are important, but they don’t define what you do.”

The role of a cinematographer, he proposes, is to immerse the audience in the film. No single shot should stand out. “If it does, then you have failed in a way,” he says. “It is not just about pretty pictures. You can’t really put your finger on great cinematography; it just gets you and adds something to the story and the performances. It creates a world you are suddenly immersed in and emotionally moved by.”

James takes a similar viewpoint, and suggests it’s not just a film’s dialogue that works to tell a story, but also its visuals. “The actors may be doing whatever they are doing, but the framing is also telling you something on a very visceral level. To me, that is great cinematography.”

According to Deakins, every film he has shot is of its time and, if he had the option to revisit any of them, he wouldn’t change anything. Despite this, he admits he’s often disappointed when he first rewatches something because it reminds him of the inevitable trade-offs made in production. “Everything you do is a compromise,” he explains. “But then we watch it again a few years later and think it’s not so bad really.”

Similarly, when I ask him to highlight a favourite shot from his career, he finds the question impossible to answer. “We have wonderful memories of different movies, but you can’t say one is better than the other because sometimes it’s about the people or place and different things you remember.”

Since working on Empire of Light in 2022, Deakins has not been tempted by any scripts, although he admits he would consider a science-fiction film if the right one came along. For now, the plan is to continue the Team Deakins podcast.

“James started it and does all the work on it and I just waffle on,” he laughs. “I had no idea what a podcast was when we first started it during the pandemic. It’s nice to hear people’s paths and how they got into the position they hold within film.”

“We never know what is going to happen or what the other person is going to say,” James adds. “We do a lot of research beforehand and then most of the time during the podcast we are just chatting and going off what they are saying, so it is a conversation.”

Both point to people’s shared interest in knowing how others got into the film business. They always pose this question to guests on the podcast.

“It is really important you tell younger people there are multiple possible paths into the film industry,” Deakins concludes. “You have just got to have the passion and the patience.”

Over five decades, Deakins’ approach has remained consistent. The tools might have changed, and the industry itself has been upended several times over, but his emphasis on clarity, collaboration and simplicity endures to this day. 

This article appears in the June/July 2026 issue of Definition