Oscar-winning producer Jeremy Thomas, known for films including The Last Emperor and Sexy Beast, has died aged 77, his publicist has said.<\/p>\n
A statement to the Press Association confirmed that Thomas “passed away peacefully” surrounded by his family and loved ones at his country home in Oxfordshire on Friday.<\/p>\n
Thomas was a celebrated figure in the film industry who worked with international directors including Bernardo Bertolucci, David Cronenberg, and Matteo Garrone through his decades-long career.<\/p>\n
His other best-known films included the 1990 drama The Sheltering Sky, starring John Malkovich and Debra Winger, as well as the 2015 dystopian thriller High-Rise, starring Tom Hiddleston and Jeremy Irons.<\/p>\n
The British producer carved a name for himself with the mainstream success of The Last Emperor, a 1987 biographical drama film about the life of Puyi, the final monarch of China’s Qing dynasty. <\/p>\n
The film, directed by Bertolucci and starring John Lone, Joan Chen, Peter O’Toole, and Vivian Wu, received high critical acclaim and won nine Academy Awards, including Best Picture.<\/p>\n
Thomas went on to have four other collaborations with Bertolucci during his film career, extending into the early 2000s on The Sheltering Sky, Little Buddha, Stealing Beauty, and The Dreamers.<\/p>\n
Thomas started his career in the film industry working on the cutting-room floor before landing his first producing role on Mad Dog Morgan \u2013 a 1976 Australian biopic of the 19th-century outlaw. <\/p>\n
Despite being based in London throughout his career, Thomas dedicated himself to working with directors from across the world.<\/p>\n
He produced three films for the acclaimed director Nicolas Roeg: the 1980 mystery Bad Timing, the 1983 thriller Eureka, and the 1985 comedy-drama Insignificance.<\/p>\n
The veteran producer also worked on Nagisa Oshima’s 1983 war drama Merry Christmas, Mr Lawrence, starring the late David Bowie as a defiant British soldier named Major Jack ‘Strafer’ Celliers.<\/p>\n
Thomas’ other credits included A Dangerous Method, directed by the Canadian filmmaker Cronenberg and starring Michael Fassbender, Viggo Mortensen, and Keira Knightley in a historical drama about psychoanalysts Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung.<\/p>\n
Thomas received an Outstanding European Achievement in World Cinema award from the European Film Academy in 2006. <\/p>\n
His latest collaboration with Japanese filmmaker Takashi Miike, titled Bad Lieutenant: Tokyo, premieres at the Toronto International Film Festival on Monday.<\/p>\n
Source: Press Association<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Oscar-winning producer Jeremy Thomas, known for films including The Last Emperor and Sexy Beast, has died aged 77,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":622862,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[93,61,60],"class_list":["post-622861","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-entertainment","tag-ie","tag-ireland"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/622861","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=622861"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/622861\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/622862"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=622861"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=622861"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=622861"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}