Oscar-winning film producer Jeremy Thomas dies aged 77

Oscar-winning producer Jeremy Thomas, whose films included The Last Emperor and Sexy Beast, has died aged 77.

The British filmmaker “passed away peacefully” surrounded by family and loved ones at his home in Oxfordshire on Friday, his publicist said in a statement.

Thomas built an international reputation over a career spanning five decades, working with directors including David Cronenberg, Nagisa Oshima, Julian Temple and Nicolas Roeg and backing independent films alongside mainstream successes.

He best known work, Bernardo Bertolucci’s The Last Emperor, won nine Academy Awards, including best picture, and earned Thomas an Oscar as producer.

The critically-acclaimed 1987 biographical drama about the final monarch of China’s Qing dynasty starred Joan Chen, Peter O’Toole and Vivian Wu.

Thomas repeatedly collaborated with Bertolucci, also producing The Sheltering Sky, Little Buddha, Stealing Beauty and The Dreamers.

He has also worked with several British directors at the start of their careers including Ben Wheatley, Jonathan Glazer, Stephen Frears and David Mackenzie.

Thomas’s other credits include Oshima’s Merry Christmas, Mr Lawrence, starring David Bowie, Cronenberg’s A Dangerous Method, Roeg’s Bad Timing and Eureka, Fast Food Nation, the Great Rock ‘n’ Roll Swindle, and the film adaptations of the JG Ballard books Crash and High-Rise.

After beginning his career in the cutting room, London-based Thomas landed his first production role on the 1976 Australian film Mad Dog Morgan.

In 2006 he received the European Film Academy’s award for Outstanding European Achievement in World Cinema and in 2009 was made a CBE in the New Year Honours.

Thomas’s latest collaboration with Japanese director Takashi Miike, Bad Lieutenant:Tokyo, is due to premiere at the Toronto Film Festival on Monday.