Tributes pour in for US director Sidney Lumet

Tributes have been pouring in for film director Sidney Lumet, who died of lymphoma at his Manhattan home on Saturday aged 86.

Woody Allen described Lumet, who made over 40 films during his career including his first feature 12 Angry Men in 1957, Dog Day Afternoon, Network and Serpico as “the quintessential NY film-maker.”

“I’m constantly amazed how many films of his prodigious output were wonderful and how many actors and actresses did their best work under his direction,” he added.

“The death of Sidney Lumet really marks the end of an era,” said fellow New York film-maker Martin Scorsese. “I admire so many of his movies.”

“He had a unique gift with actors, an unusually dynamic feeling for drama, and a powerful sense of place, of the world of the picture,” Scorsese added.

Lumet never won an Academy Award for directing but was honoured with a Lifetime Achievement Oscar in 2005. He was known as being an actors director, drawing 17 Oscar nominations from actors including Marlon Brando, Henry Fonda and Faye Dunaway.

Actor Phillip Seymour Hoffman, who starred in Lumet’s last film, the 2007 melodrama Before The Devil Knows You’re Dead, also paid his respects to the director.

“He was a true master who loved directing and working with actors like no other.”

HIs daughter Jenny Lumet followed her father into the business, writing the screenplay for Jonathan Demme’s 2008 drama Rachel Getting Married.