Sidney Lumet.

Legendary filmmaker Sidney Lumet passed away yesterday aged 86, known as an 'actor's director' having started out on the other side of the camera, Lumet had worked with the best of 'em, including the likes of Al Pacino, Sean Connery, Robert Duvall, Christopher Walken and Henry Fonda, to Nick Nolte, River Phoenix and Philip Seymour Hoffman in later years. Famed for getting the very best out of his actors, Lumet produced several classic works over six decades, often dealing with social justice and more gritty realism. The mean streets of his favourite New York, which he shunned Hollywood for, played a huge part in his movies such as Serpico, Dog Day Afternoon and Q&A, going across the water for English gritty cop drama in The Offence - filmed on the less mean streets of Bracknell, which went largely unseen due to Connery's more high profile Bond films of the era. Nominated for four Academy Awards and the actors in his films copping as many as seventeen, it wasn't until 2005 when he picked up the Oscar for Lifetime Achievement himself. From his debut film the hugely acclaimed Twelve Angry Men in 1957 to the underrated The Devil knows You're Dead in 2007 made at the very tender age of 83. A great Director who made some of my personal favourites. Sidney Lumet 1924 - 2011.