Peter Bogdanovich, the Oscar-nominated director of ‘The Last Picture Show,’ dead at 82

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He was 82 years old.

Bogdanovich died of natural causes at his Los Angeles home, his daughter told The Hollywood Reporter, which her agent later confirmed to CNN.

Bogdanovich, a renowned film historian, was writing about movies when he made the leap to directing, moving to Los Angeles in the 1960s and receiving his hiatus from producer Roger Corman.

However, his career took off with his black and white adaptation of author Larry McMurtry’s “The Last Picture Show,” set in a Texas town, which premiered in 1971. Movies like “What’s Up, Doc?” pairing Barbra Streisand and Ryan O’Neal, and “Paper Moon” (also featuring O’Neal, and his little daughter Tatum, who won the supporting actress Oscar at age 10) followed.

Bogdanovich also made headlines off-screen with his various relationships, including one with “Last Picture Show” co-star Cybill Shepherd, who later starred in his movie “Daisy Miller.”

The director also dated Playboy model-turned-actress Dorothy Stratten, who appeared in his 1981 film “They All Laughed,” before being murdered by her husband, Paul Snider. He later wrote a book on Stratten’s death.

Bogdanovich’s admiration for great cinematographic talent led him to befriend figures like Orson Welles, and one of his most recent projects was to help edit and release the director’s incomplete film of “Citizen Kane.” side of the wind “, on which Welles had worked. intermittently from 1970 until his death in 1985.

Bogdanovich had a small role in the film and also acted in other projects, perhaps the most memorable playing a therapist in “The Sopranos.”

Director Guillermo del Toro Lauded Bogdanovich On twitter, calling him “a champion of cinema” who had “solo interviewed and consecrated the lives and work of more classic filmmakers than almost anyone else of his generation.”

Born in New York, Bogdanovich’s interest in chronicling the works of great filmmakers included the book “Who the Devil Made It: Conversations With Legendary Directors” and, more recently, “The Plot Thickens,” a podcast dedicated to the movies “and the people who make them” for Turner Classic Movies, CNN’s sister network.

TCM noted that Bogdanovich’s passion for the medium “inspired generations of filmmakers.”

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