22 Jan 2013

Film director Michael Winner dies

7:09 am on 22 January 2013

British film director Michael Winner died at his London home on Monday. He was 77.

Winner's movie career spanned more than 40 years and included the successful Death Wish series starring Charles Bronson as a vigilante out to avenge family murders.

Also among the more than 30 feature films he directed was the spy movie Scorpio, starring Burt Lancaster.

The director worked with some of the biggest stars in Hollywood, including Marlon Brando, Robert Mitchum and Faye Dunaway.

Winner later reinvented himself as a restaurant critic, writing about food in his typically flamboyant style in his Winner's Dinners column for the Sunday Times.

In a statement released to the media, his wife Geraldine said: "A light has gone out in my life."

Reuters reports the director had been ill for some time, and revealed last summer that specialists had given him 18 months to live due to heart and liver problems.