Roger Ebert Dead At Age 70 After Long Battle With Cancer, Leaves Behind Distinguished Legacy

At age 70, Roger Ebert, the most famous and popular film critic of his time has died, reports the Chicago Sun-Times.

As a television co-host, Ebert was known for his famous thumbs up or thumbs down trademark which had the power to influence a movie's success.  He also became the first journalist to win a Pulitzer Prize for movie criticism.

Ebert had been a film critic for the Chicago Sun-Times since 1967.   He also hosted a long-running TV program alongside the late Gene Siskel until 1999, and later with his Sun-Times colleague Richard Roeper.  

However, his life took a sharp turn in 2002 when he began his battle with cancer.  He underwent operations for cancer of the thyroid, salivary glands and chin and lost his ability to eat, drink and speak.  He also lost most of his chin and had to use a feeding tube in 2006. 

Nonetheless, he continued to write reviews and commentary full-time, published a cookbook and eventually returned to television in 2011 in a new show called "Ebert Presents At the Movies." The show had new hosts, but featured Ebert in his own segment where he used a chin prosthesis and enlisted voice-over guests to read his reviews.   

In 2011, Ebert published an autobiography titled "Life Itself" and revealed that he considered himself "beneath everything else a fan."

"I have seen untold numbers of movies and forgotten most of them, I hope, but I remember those worth remembering, and they are all on the same shelf in my mind," he wrote in his memoir.

In 2010, he told Esquire magazine, "When I am writing, my problems become invisible, and I am the same person I always was. All is well. I am as I should be."