Russell was born in Southampton and studied photography at Walthamstow Art School. He then began to make bio-documentaries for the BBC which reached a very wide public. The most successful of these was probably his film on the composer Edward Elgar, which became one of the most popular films of its kind ever shown on TV, and contributed to a marked revival of interest in the composer's music. Russell made more than 30 films for the BBC Monitor and Omnibus programmes, and became known as one of the finest directors working in British television.Turning to the big screen, Russell's earlier feature films attracted little attention, but his third, a version of DH Lawrence's Women in Love (1969), brought him instant fame and an Academy Award nomination for Best Director.
This marked the beginning of a five-year period of astonishing productivity, in which Russell produced such films as The Music Lovers (1970), The Devils (1971), Savage Messiah (1972), Mahler (1974), and Tommy (1975). At the time many of these works were criticized for their lack of historical accuracy (particularly The Music Lovers, which portrayed the life of the composer Tchaikovsky in a sensationalist style that infuriated purists) , their blurring of dream and fact, their blatant symbolism, and their excessive flights of fancy. Today, however, some critics believe that during this period Russell achieved a "sustained intensity and level of brilliance which is rarely matched in film history".
Russell's later work is not considered to have reached the heights attained in these films, with the possible exception of Altered States (1980), although The Rainbow (1989) and Lady Chatterley (1992) are regarded as impressive pieces of work.
Some feel that Russell's extraordinary talent never quite matured and believe this may be due in part to the hostile criticism he received in his earlier years, when he was accused of "warping" his subject matter by the misguided application of an excessively lively imagination.
