Alex Cox was born in Liverpool in 1954. He came to Oxford to study law in the early 1970s. At Oxford, he became interested in drama before leaving for Bristol University to study film. After Bristol, Cox moved to America, where he continued to study film at UCLA.

He remained in the States, writing many screenplays and directing a short film, Sleep is for Sissies (1980), before getting his big break with Repo Man in 1984. This cult classic led to the celebrated Sid and Nancy in 1986, which stars Gary Oldman and Chloë Webb and tells the story of Sex Pistol Sid Vicious and his relationship with groupie Nancy Spungen.

Resisting the lure of the mainstream, Cox next directed the Spaghetti Western spoof, Straight to Hell, and Walker, featuring Ed Harris as the 19th-century adventurer William Walker, who moved to Nicaragua and became its President for two years.

Next followed an adaptation of a Jorge Luis Borges short story, Death and the Compass, starring Peter Boyle as the detective caught up in a plot that is, to use a word often associated with Cox’s work, labyrinthine. Cox retained a Latin American feel in his next movie, Highway Patrolman, which is based upon the turbulent true-life experiences of a Mexican patrullero.

In 1996, Cox made The Winner, a comedy set in Las Vegas about a man who just keeps on winning at the tables, before returning to his native Liverpool to make Three Businessmen in 1998. The first film to be made through Cox and partner Tod Davies’ own production company, Exterminating Angel, Three Businessmen is a surrealist comedy that spans the world without ever leaving Liverpool.

Revengers Tragedy, based on the play by the Elizabethan playwright and poet Thomas Middleton, followed in 2002, another British comedy with tinges of horror, and an all-star cast, including Christopher Eccleston, Derek Jacobi, Eddie Izzard, Diana Quick and Sophie Dahl.

Cox’s documentaries and work for television includes Red, Hot and Blue (1990), a film about U2; a documentary about the great Japanese director Akira Kurosawa, Kurosawa: The Last Emperor (1999); a documentary on the Emmanuelle films, entitled A Hard Look (2000); Mike Hama must Die! (2002); and I’m a Juvenile Delinquent, Jail Me! (2004).

In addition to his directing, Cox also co-wrote the screenplay to Terry Gilliam’s Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1998) and has recently been involved with comedy team, the Myster Crew. He has acted in his own films as well as in those of other directors, including Dennis Hopper’s Catchfire (1990) and Alex de la Iglesia’s Perdita Durango (1997). He also starred as a Porno Stud in Rosemarie Turko’s 1984 film, Scarred.

Cox’s films have baffled and perplexed critics over the years, but several words crop up time and again in reviews: cult, distinctive, honest, funny, talented, surreal, original, brave and uncompromising.

Cox presented four of his films at a two-day event in Oxford, which took place at Magdalen College on 20 and 21 November 2004.

Organised by the Ruskin School of  Art in association with Magdalen College Film Society.