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Deer Hunter director Michael Cimino dies aged 77

Updated / Monday, 4 Jul 2016 08:02
Michael Cimino
Michael Cimino

Oscar winner Michael Cimino, the director of classics The Deer Hunter and Heaven's Gate, has died. He was 77. A cause of death has yet to be announced.

Cimino's friend and former lawyer, Eric Weissmann, said his body had been found on Saturday at his Los Angeles home after friends had been unable to contact him. 

Cimino made just eight films during his career but has been cited as a major influence by generations of filmmakers.

Born in New York in 1939, Cimino studied painting at college and graduated with a Master's in Fine Arts before becoming an ad director.

Having worked on the screenplay for Clint Eastwood's 1973 'Dirty Harry' film Magnum Force, Cimino was offered the chance to write and direct the star's next film, Thunderbolt and Lightfoot. A mix of the heist and buddy movie genres, it ranks as one of the best films of Eastwood's acting career and saw his co-star, Jeff Bridges, nominated for a Best Supporting Actor Oscar.

Cimino followed it up with the 1978 film which made his name, the Robert De Niro and Meryl Streep-starring Vietnam War epic The Deer Hunter.

One of the first films to tackle the conflict's effect on the American psyche, it was a visually stunning and emotionally exhausting masterpiece. Nominated for nine Oscars, it won five including Best Picture and Best Director. It launched Streep and co-star Christopher Walken to stardom, with the latter winning Best Supporting Actor at the Oscars.

After the critical and commercial success of The Deer Hunter, Cimino had his pick of Hollywood projects and reunited with Bridges and Walken for 1980's Heaven's Gate. Another epic - this time a Western - it told the story of the Johnson County War between ranchers and small farmers in Wyoming in the late 1800s. The film, which went through multiple cuts, ballooned way over budget and was a box office disaster which was blamed for the collapse of movie studio United Artists. However, it is now regarded as a classic of American cinema.

Cimino's career never recovered after Heaven's Gate and he would make just five more films. He returned in 1985 with the Mickey Rourke-starring gangland thriller Year of the Dragon, which has developed a cult following over the years, but subsequent thrillers The Sicilian and The Desperate Hours were far below what was expected of a talent like Cimino's. His final film was The Sunchaser in 1996.

Michael Cimino with his Year of the Dragon star Mickey Rourke at a screening of the Rourke-starring The Wrestler in Hollywood in 2008 

Notoriously publicity shy, Cimino became an almost mythical figure in Hollywood with his bizarre appearance only adding to the rumours, including one that he had undergone gender reassignment. In recent years he had made a number of appearances at film festivals, receiving a career honour at Venice in 2012.

Clint Eastwood and Michael Cimino reunited at the Directors' Guild of America Awards Feature Film Symposium in Los Angeles in February 2015

In Thunderbolt and Lightfoot, The Deer Hunter and Heaven's Gate Cimino gifted three films to the world which are cherished by cinema lovers and will continue to be passed down the decades as rights-of-passage movies. Robert De Niro summed up the feelings of many with his succinct tribute: "Our work together is something I will always remember. He will be missed." 

Tributes to Cimino have poured in on social media from his fellow directors, among them: 

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