From the custard pie guns of Bugsy Malone to the legwarmers of Fame; from the prison brutality of Midnight Express to the unalloyed musical joy of The Commitments – the career of Alan Parker in all its variety and brilliance is to be celebrated by a Bafta fellowship next month.

Parker, 68, follows in the footsteps of Martin Scorsese, Stanley Kubrick and Elizabeth Taylor in receiving the honour. It is the British Academy of Film and Television Arts' equivalent to a lifetime achievement award, but the director is not worried about the signals that accepting such an award might send.

"I'm honoured by the award – flattered, really," he said on Tuesday. "A lot of people deserve it more than I do. I know film-makers who have refused these sort of things, thinking it means they're never going to work again.

"But in the end, you get to a certain age, you've made a number of films, and your time comes along."

Parker grew up as a working-class boy in Islington, north London, and shot to prominence in the mid-70s after a successful career writing and directing TV commercials, including the award-winning Cinzano series featuring Leonard Rossiter and Joan Collins.

But it was with his first big-screen feature – the 1976 children's gangster classic Bugsy Malone, complete with its pedal-powered cars, custard pie machine guns, catchy 20s-style tunes and precocious performances from Scott Baio and Jodie Foster – that he broke directly into Hollywood, gaining finance for the film in the US after it was rejected by backers in Britain.

Parker wears his film-making achievements modestly, saying: "I always argued against the auteur theory, in that I think cinema is a collaborative art form.

"I've had some fantastically good people help me make the movies. On the other hand, there is an identity to the films, which is as much mine as anyone else's, and I'm pleased with that. I can say honestly I'm proud of my work."

After Bugsy Malone, he then went on to make a string of Hollywood pictures. The Turkish-set prison drama Midnight Express, scripted by Oliver Stone and which secured Parker an Oscar nomination for best director, was followed by the musical Fame (1980) and the intense marital-breakdown drama Shoot the Moon (1982), starring Albert Finney and Diane Keaton.

Later achievements include the civil rights crime film Mississippi Burning, for which Parker received a second Oscar nomination, and the Bafta-winning Irish musical comedy The Commitments.

Never one to be pinned down, he also directed the experimental rock musical Pink Floyd – The Wall (1982), featuring Bob Geldof as a troubled rock star, and the anarchic colonic irrigation comedy The Road to Wellville (1994), with Anthony Hopkins.

But as the British film industry underwent a commercial revival in the mid-90s, Parker returned from Hollywood and went from poacher to gamekeeper, moving firmly into the film establishment by becoming chairman of the British Film Institute in 1998, and then chairman of the UK Film Council in 2000 for its first five years. In 1995, Parker was given a CBE for services to the British film industry and he received a knighthood in 2002.

Under Parker's stewardship, the film council evolved into a credible distributor of lottery funds and other government monies after previous experiments – via the Arts Council and short-lived "film franchises" – were deemed to have failed.

The film council, however, was scrapped in 2010 as part of the then-new coalition government's so-called bonfire of the quangos. "I was very proud of what we achieved [with the film council], and very angry that this government abolished it. It was a petulant, political act: we were seen as very much a product of New Labour, and that was anathema to a rightwing ideologue like [the then culture secretary] Jeremy Hunt."

He added: "The film council was the best support agency the British film industry has ever had: a board of the very best practitioners overseeing a highly professional staff. It resulted in an unprecedented decade of stability and growth."

Parker's involvement in film industry governance took an inevitable toll on his creative work. His most recent film was a decade ago: the anti-death-penalty drama The Life of David Gale, in 2003.

The fellowship will be presented at the British Academy film awards on 10 February.