Barrie Keeffe, known for penning the screenplay for Brit gangster classic The Long Good Friday, has died aged 74 in London following a brief illness.
Keeffe’s agent, Stephen Durbridge of The Agency, confirmed the news.
London-born playwright and screenwriter Keeffe started out as an actor and journalist. His first television play, The Substitute, was produced in 1972, and his first theatre play Only A Game in 1973. He was the Royal Shakespeare Company’s writer-in-residence in 1978 and he went on to write a number of film, TV and stage plays in the 1980s.
BAFTA-nominated 1980 crime-drama The Long Good Friday, about an up-and-coming gangster, starred Bob Hoskins and Helen Mirren in a breakout role. Keefe also adapted his own stage play Sus, about police racism, for the 2010 movie of the same name starring Rafe Spall and Clint Dyer.
