1990s
In the 1990 film The Russia House, starring Sean Connery and Michelle Pfeiffer, Russell made one of his first significant acting appearances, portraying Walter, an ambiguously gay British intelligence officer who discomfits his more strait-laced CIA counterparts. Russell henceforth occasionally acted.
The 1991 film Prisoner of Honor allowed Russell a further opportunity to explore his abiding interest in anti-Semitism through a factually-based account of the Dreyfus Affair in France. The movie featured Richard Dreyfuss in the central role of Colonel Georges Picquart, the French army investigator who exposed the army establishment's framing of the Jewish officer Captain Alfred Dreyfus.
In 1991, Russell directed his final film of any note, Whore. It was highly controversial and branded with an NC-17 rating for its sexual content. The MPAA and the theatre chains also refused to release posters or advertise a film called Whore, so for this purpose the film was re-titled "If You Can't Say It, Just See It". Russell protested his film being given such a rating when Pretty Woman got an R, on the grounds that his film showed the real hardships of being a prostitute, and the other glorified it.
By the early 1990s, Russell had become a celebrity: his notoriety and persona had attracted more attention than any of his recent work. He became largely reliant on his own finances to continue making films. Much of his work since 1990 has been commissioned for television (e.g. his 1993 TV film The Mystery of Dr. Martinu), and he contributed regularly to The South Bank Show including documentaries such as 'Classic Widows' about the widows of four leading British composers with dance sections choreographed by Amir Hosseinpour. Prisoner of Honor (1991) was Russell's final work with Oliver Reed; his final film with Glenda Jackson before she gave up acting for politics while The Secret Life of Arnold Bax (1992) was his last composer biopic.
In May 1995, he was honoured with a retrospective of his work presented in Hollywood by the American Cinematheque. Titled Shock Value, it included some of Russell's most successful and controversial films and also several of his early BBC productions. Russell attended the festival and engaged in lengthy post-screening discussions of each film with audiences and moderator Martin Lewis, who had instigated and curated the retrospective.
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