London-born film director Nicolas Roeg whose works include The Man Who Fell To Earth has died at the age of 90.
His family confirmed the news on Saturday afternoon and his son, Nicolas Roeg Junior, said he died on Friday night.
"He was a genuine dad," he said.
"He just had his 90th birthday in August."
Two of Mr Roegs films, Don't Look Now and Performance, were rated in the top 100 British films of all time by the British Film Institute in 1999.
He was born in the capital on August 15, 1928, to Jack Nicolas and Mabel Gertrude Roeg and entered the film industry as a tea boy at Marylebone Studios following completing his national service in 1947.
He managed to work his way up to camera operator on films including The Trials Of Oscar Wilde and The Sundowners in 1960 and worked as a cinematographer on Lawrence of Arabia.
He has been cited as an influence between many high-profile movie industry figures.
Don't Look Now, based on a Daphne du Maurier short story, starred Julie Christie and Donald Sutherland, while cci-fi flick The Man Who Fell To Earth famously featured David Bowie as an unhappy alien.
The son of the late Mr Bowie, the filmmaker Duncan Jones, wrote on Twitter: "Just heard another great storyteller, the inimitable Nicolas Roeg left us today.
"What an incredible body of work he's left us with! All my love to his family. Thank you for making so many brave choices, and giving this strange little lad in pyjamas an ongoing love of filmmaking."
Roeg's last major film was The Witches, in 1990, which starred Angelica Houston.
Director Edgar Wright was among those paying tribute to Roeg.
"Farewell to the extraordinary cinematic talent, director Nicolas Roeg. His films hypnotised me for years and still continue to intrigue," he wrote on Twitter.
"Along with classics like Performance and Walkabout, I could watch Don't Look Now on a loop and never tire of its intricacies. A master of the art."
As well as films, Mr Roeg also directed a number of TV series in the late 1980s and early 90s, including a televised adaption of Joseph Conrad's Heart Of Darkness in 1994.
He married actress Susan Stephen in 1957, with whom he had four children before they split in 1997.
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He married Theresa Russell in 1982 and had two children before they divorced, after which he married actress Harriet Harper in 2005.
