Legendary director Robert Altman dies
From Rob Woollard

LOS ANGELES — Oscar-winning director Robert Altman, the maverick Hollywood outsider who became famous for biting satires that reflected his cynical view of America, has died, it was announced Tuesday. He was 81.
Altman, who made several classics including “M*A*S*H”, “The Player” and “Gosford Park”, died at the Cedars Sinai Hospital in Los Angeles on Monday from complications due to cancer following an 18-month battle with the disease.
A statement from the director’s Sandcastle 5 production company in New York said Altman’s wife Kathryn and the couple’s six children were at his bedside. The statement said Altman’s death had been a surprise as the director was already working on a film he had planned to start shooting in February.
Tributes to Altman poured in from across the world of cinema, with Oscar-winning actress Meryl Streep leading the plaudits.
Streep, who starred in Altman’s latest movie “A Prairie Home Companion”, said in a statement: “What a gent, what a guy, what a great heart.”
“There’s no one like him and we’ll miss him so.”
Richard Gere, the star of Altman’s 2000 movie “Dr T and the Women”, described the director as “unprecedented”.
“There’s no one I’m prouder to have worked with ... perhaps unprecedented,” Gere said. “He understood and could express that uniquely American shapeshifting goofiness more than anyone.”
Actor and director Tim Robbins, the Machiavellian lead in Altman’s masterful 1992 black comedy about modern Hollywood, “The Player”, said the director had left behind a body of work that would stand the test of time.
“His unique vision and maverick sensibilities in film-making have inspired countless directors of my generation,” Robbins said. “He leaves behind a legacy of great American films. He will be deeply missed.”
Altman directed 86 films during a 55-year career that saw him receive seven Academy Award nominations. He received an honorary Oscar this year in recognition of a lifetime’s work which “repeatedly reinvented the art form and inspired filmmakers and audiences alike,” the Academy said. Altman described his career as a long-running movie at this year’s Oscars.
“To me, I’ve just made one long film,” he said. “I love film-making. It has given me an entree to the world and the human condition, and for that I am truly grateful.”
Altman was nominated for a best director’s Oscar five times — for “Gosford Park” (2001), “M*A*S*H” (1970), “Nashville” (1975), “The Player” (1992) and “Short Cuts” (1993). But he never won.
Famed for his eclectic work, fierce cinematic independence and often cynical social and political eye, Altman was responsible for a staggering variety of films, many of which other directors refused to take on.
While not all of his films were successes, Altman — who produced 39 and wrote 37 of them — always maintained that they were never made to satisfy a mass audience.
Among his other notable movies are the 1971 western “McCabe and Mrs Miller”, 1973 crime thriller “The Long Goodbye”, and 1974’s “Thieves Like Us”.
Born in Kansas City, Missouri in 1925, the young Altman took an early interest in sound recording before enlisting to become an air force bomber pilot in 1945. After the war, he wrote magazine stories and radio scripts before finding work making documentary and employee-training films in Kansas City.
His first low-budget feature, “The Delinquents”, came in 1957, before he moved to Hollywood to write for television shows such as “Alfred Hitchcock Presents” and “Bonanza”.