Getting his Honorary award at the 78th Annual Academy Awards.
ZUMA Press

CelebNews@Usmagazine.com! - Director Robert Altman Dies at 81

Robert Altman, the film director behind M-A-S-H and Short Cuts, died at the age of 81 at a Los Angeles hospital Monday night, the Associated Press reports.

The cause of death has not been disclosed, but is expected to be released Tuesday afternoon.

A five-time Academy Award nominee for best director, most recently for 2001's Gosford Park, Altman won a lifetime achievement Academy Award in 2006.

When he received his honorary Oscar in 2006, Altman revealed that he'd had a heart transplant a decade earlier.

"I didn't make a big secret out of it, but I thought nobody would hire me again," he said following the ceremony. "You know, there's such a stigma about heart transplants, and there's a lot of us out there."

"No other filmmaker has gotten a better shake than I have," Altman said while accepting the award. "I'm very fortunate in my career. I've never had to direct a film I didn't choose or develop. My love for filmmaking has given me an entree to the world and to the human condition."

Altman was born February 20, 1925, in Kansas City, Missouri. He was a bomber pilot in World War II and studied engineering at the University of Missouri in Columbia before taking a job making industrial films. He later moved into feature films with The Delinquents, and worked in television throughout the mid-1960s, directing episodes of such series as Bonanza and Alfred Hitchcock Presents. Other notable works include Nashville and The Player.

Altman’s final film, A Prairie Home Companion, was released last May and featured an ensemble cast that included Meryl Streep, Lily Tomlin, Lindsay Lohan, Kevin Kline, and Tommy Lee Jones.

Altman and his wife, Kathryn, had two sons, Robert and Matthew, and he had a daughter, Christine, and two other sons, Michael and Stephen, from two previous marriages.

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