March 7, 1999
Web posted at: 1:58 p.m. EST (1858 GMT)

LONDON (CNN) -- Stanley Kubrick, director of "A Clockwork Orange" and "2001: A Space Odyssey," died Sunday at the age of 70.

Kubrick's family said he died at his rural Hertfordshire home north of London.

"The family has asked us to release the news of his death, to let people know," a spokesman for the Hertfordshire police said.

Kubrick, born in the Bronx section of New York in 1928, launched his film career -- using a second-hand camera -- with the documentary "Day of the Fight" in 1950. The film was a 15-minute look at the last hours before a fight of middleweight boxer Walter Cartier and was based on a photograph Kubrick took for Look magazine.

Kubrick had honed his visual craft as a still photographer, selling his first picture to Look when he was 16. He joined Look's staff a year later after dropping out of City College of the City of New York.

RKO Pathe News was impressed with Kubrick's first attempt at moving pictures, and agreed to back his next documentary. His first full length film was the 1953 war picture "Fear and Desire," which was not a popular success.

After the critical success of "The Killing" and the Kirk Douglas vehicle "Paths of Glory," Kubrick filmed the epic "Spartacus" in 1960, with Tony Curtis, Kirk Douglas, Laurence Olivier and other Hollywood headliners.

Kubrick tempted fate and the Hollywood censors in 1962, filming the controversial Vladimir Nabokov novel "Lolita," about an older man's love for a teen-age girl. Some critics were disappointed with the result, saying the film, starring James Mason, Shelley Winters and Sue Lyon, softened the theme of the book.

Next, Peter Sellars starred in 1964's "Dr. Strangelove, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb," an anti-war comedy in which a crazed U.S. general plots to attack the Soviets, and Slim Pickens rides a nuclear bomb.

He also made "Barry Lyndon," released in 1975, "The Shining" in 1978 and "Full Metal Jacket" in 1987.

Kubrick recently finished filming "Eyes Wide Shut" with the husband-and-wife acting team of Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman in London. The film, made in secrecy, was slated to be released in July.