Tony Curtis passes away

The news has just broken that Tony Curtis has passed away. Jamie Lee Curtis' rep confirmed the news to ET but no further details are currently known. Tony was due to visit the IFI for a short season of his work back in June of this year, but sadly had to cancel.

Born in the Bronx during the Great Depression, Bernard Schwartz overcame a traumatic, poverty-stricken childhood – as documented in the great show-biz autobiography American Prince – to become Hollywood legend Tony Curtis, enjoying a rather colourful life both on and off screen. Since his first notable appearance as a gigolo in Robert Sidomak’s Criss Cross (1949), Curtis notched up more than a hundred screen credits, amongst them iconic classics Sweet Smell of Success, Spartacus, The Defiant Ones (for which he was nominated for a Best Actor Oscar in 1957) and Billy Wilder’s immortal Some Like It Hot. He had been directed by everyone from Carol Reed and Stanley Kubrick to Nicolas Roeg and Quentin Tarantino.