Ted Kotcheff (sometimes credited as William Kotcheff or William T. Kotcheff; born April 7, 1931 in Toronto is a Canadian film and television director, who is well known for his work on several high-profile British television productions and as a director of films such as First Blood.

The son of immigrants from Bulgaria, ektid26744.aspx" target="_blank">http://www.thephoenix.com/article_ektid26744.aspxhttp://www.filmreferencelibrary.ca/index.asp?layid=46&csid1=3093&navid=46 after graduating in English Literature from the _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 still very much in its infancy in the country. Kotcheff was the youngest director on the staff of the CBC, where he worked for two years on shows such as General Motors Theatre before in 1958 leaving Canada to live and work in the United Kingdom.

He was inspired by his compatriot Sydney Newman, who had been the Director of Drama at the CBC and had moved across to the UK to take up a similar position at ABC Television, one of the local franchise holders of the ITV network who also produced much of the nationally-networked programming for the channel. At the ABC, Newman oversaw as producer the popular Armchair Theatre anthology drama programme, and he employed Kotcheff as a director on this series, for which he directed several plays between 1958 and 1960.

Kotcheff was responsible for helming some of the best-remembered instalments in the Armchair Theatre strand, although for very different reasons. Underground, transmitted on November 28, 1958 saw him having to cope with one of his actors, Gareth Jones, dying while in make-up between two of his scenes. As the play was being transmitted live, Kotcheff had to hastily improvise a way around the loss of one of his main cast, with Newman telling him to "shoot it like a football match", following whatever action happened on set with the improvising surviving cast members. More successfully, Kotcheff also directed the following year's No Trams to Lime Street by Welsh playwright Alun Owen, who later went on to write The Beatles' film A Hard Day's Night in 1964.

As well as directing for Armchair Theatre during the late 1950s and early 1960s, Kotcheff also directed several productions for the theatre, and in 1962 directed his first feature film, Tiara Tahiti. He went on to direct other features during the decade, including Life at the Top (1965) and Two Gentlemen Sharing (1969).

In 1971, he directed the Australian film Outback, which won much acclaim and was the Australian entry at the Cannes Film Festival. The same year he returned to television, directing the Play for Today production Edna, the Inebriate Woman for the BBC, which won him a British Academy Television Award for Best Director. In 2000, the play was voted one of the 100 Greatest British Television Programmes of the 20th century in a poll of industry professionals conducted by the British Film Institute.

In 1972, he returned home to Canada, where he directed several films including the adaptation of his friend and one-time roommate Mordecai Richler's novel The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz. The film won the Golden Bear at the Berlin Film Festival making it the first Canadian film to win an international award. He directed many other films throughout the 1970s and 80s, most in the United States, with perhaps the best-known being the Sylvester Stallone feature First Blood in 1982.

In the 1990s he returned to directing for television, working on various American series such as The Red Shoe Diaries and Law & Order: Special Victims Unit. Kotcheff now lives in Beverley Hills with his wife and two children when he is not on the set of Law & Order in New York. He has three children from a previous marriage.

Ted Kotcheff was born in Toronto, Canada. After graduating in English Literature at the University of Toronto, he began his professional career directing TV drama at age 24 at the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. He was the youngest director in the CBC. After two years at the CBC, he went to live and work in England, directing in television and the theratre. He twice won the British Emmy for Best Director, the second time for an extraordinary docudrama about a female derelict entitled, EDNA, THE INEBRIATE WOMAN. The film also won the Best Actress and Best Script Award. Ted Kotcheff's television work in Great Britain was part of the new wave of working class actors and drama that changed the British theatre and television in the late 1950's. His stage successes include the long running Lionel Bart musical, MAGGIE May. His film career started in England: TIARA TIHITI, a social comedy starring James Mason and John Mills; LIFE AT THE TOP, starring Laurence Harvey and Jean Simmons; TWO GENTLEMEN SHARING, starring Robin Phillips, a film set in the West Indian community of London and dealing with relationships between black and white. TWO GENTLEMEN SHARING was the official British entry at the Venice Film Festival. His next film, OUTBACK was made in Australia. It was the Australian entry in the Cannes Film Festival and many Australians still think it is the finest Australian film ever made and the beginning of the renaissance of the Australian cinema. Ted Kotcheff then returned to Canada in 1972 to make a film of a novel written by his best friend, Mordecai Richler, THE APPRENTICESHIP OF DUDDY KRAVITZ. This film, thought to be one of the best Canadian films ever made, won the Golden Bear First Prize at the Berlin Film Festival and numerous other awards including an Academy Award nomination for best script. Ted has also directed FUN WITH DICK AND JANE, starring Jane Fonda and George Segal; SOMEONE IS KILLING THE GREAT CHEFS OF EUROPE, starring Jackie Bisset and George Segal; NORTH DALLAS FORTY which he also wrote and starring Nick Nolte (a film conside red to be one of the best ever made about professional sport); FIRST BLOOD, starring Sylvester Stallone (one of the biggest box office winners of all time); UNCOMMON VALOR, starring Gene Hackman; and WEEKEND AT BERNIE'S. In the mid-1980's, Ted Kotcheff made a film of another Mordecai Richler novel, JOSHUA THEN AND NOW. This film, starring James Woods and Alan Arkin, was the official Canadian entry in the Cannes Film Festival, and together with THE APPRENTICESHIP OF DUDDY KRAVITZ, is one of the most widely known and acclaimed Canadian films in the United States. Mr. Kotcheff is married to Laifun Chung and has two children, Thomas age 7 and Alexandra age 9. Laifun Chung is President of their film company, Panoptica Productions, Inc. He has homes in Toronto and Los Angeles. August 1996