Roger Ebert Dead at 70

Film critic Roger Ebert has died of cancer at age 70, reports his own newspaper, the Chicago Sun-Times. Ebert had announced only yesterday that his cancer had returned, but he vowed to continue writing reviews when he could. He gained fame with his At the Movies television show with the late Gene Siskel years ago—they popularized the thumbs-up or thumbs-down approach—and he became the first journalist to win a Pulitzer for movie criticism, notes AP.

Surgeries had left Ebert's face deformed, a development he went public about in an Esquire profile of 2010. He wrote that same year that he didn't fear death. "I was perfectly content before I was born, and I think of death as the same state. I am grateful for the gifts of intelligence, love, wonder and laughter. You can't say it wasn't interesting." (More Roger Ebert stories.)