Background
Simmons was born in West Ham, the fourth of five children – three boys and two girls – to parents of Polish extraction, Miriam (née Corb) and Joseph Simmons (originally Anzulowsky), from a family of market traders.
director novelist film producer
Simmons was born in West Ham, the fourth of five children – three boys and two girls – to parents of Polish extraction, Miriam (née Corb) and Joseph Simmons (originally Anzulowsky), from a family of market traders.
He was associated with, though separate from, the Free Cinema movement. He said he was greatly influenced by Humphrey Jennings and by Michelangelo Antonioni’s movie Il Grido (1957). He was named Isidore but adopted the forename Anthony in his teens.
After attending West Ham Grammar School, Simmons gained a law degree from the London School of Economics, where his course was interrupted by wartime service.
Simmons asserted: "I wasn’t aiming to be a film director I was a lawyer aiming to be a writer
But I felt that if I wrote films it was more immediate. lieutenant’s quicker. You haven’t got to spell out the words, you just make the image and tell the story." Foreign several years Simmons worked in radio and made television commercials until his next feature The Optimists of Nine Elms (1973) starring Peter Sellers.
His feature movie Black Joy (1977) was entered into the Cannes Film Festival.
He also directed episodes of British television series including The Professionals, Supergran, Inspector Morse, Van Der Valk, A Touch of Frost and C.A.T.S. Eyes.