Just yesterday we reported that the renowned film critic, Roger Ebert was battling cancer once again. Sadly today his battle has ended at age 70. The Chicago Sun-Times, where he had worked for many years announced the writer’s death. The world knew Ebert for his movie critiques and television co-hosting along with his partner in crime, Gene Siskel. His famous thumbs up or thumbs down would determine whether a movie would sink or swim. Ebert became the very first film critic to win a Pulitzer Prize in 1975 and received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2005.
He started writing his film review column for the Sun-Times in 1967 and wrote more than 20 books throughout his career. After co-hosting several TV shows, such as “At the Movies with Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert” for 23 years, Ebert teamed up with Richard Roeper. Come 2002, his thyroid cancer had set in and surgery of the thyroid, salivary glands and chin caused him to lose his ability to eat, drink and speak without a tube. But he continued to express himself the best way he could: through writing. “When I am writing, my problems become invisible, and I am the same person I always was,” he told Esquire magazine in 2010. “All is well. I am as I should be.”
And so we say goodbye to, as Forbes called him… “the most powerful pundit in America”.
