George A. Romero, the 77-year-old director of the modern zombie's films, died in Toronto hospital on Sunday, July 16, Los Angeles Times announced. The director suffered from lung cancer.
Mr. Romero died peacefully in sleep while listening to the score of his one of the favorite films "The Quiet Man (1952)," with his daughter Tina Romero and wife Suzanne Romero, according to the statement of Romeo's close friend and partner Peter Grunwald.
Romero became popular through his horror films
George Romero was born in Bronx, New York. He studied at the Carnegie Mellon University and successfully graduated in 1961.
He became popular after he shot a black and white film "Night of the Living Dead," spending $114,000 in its filmmaking in 1968. In 1999, the picture was included in the National Film Registry. After "Night of the Living Dead," he started another series of horror films. Among them are "Season of the Witch (1972)", "The Dawn of the Dead (1978)", "The Day of the Dead (1985)", "Monkey Shines (1988)", "The Land of the Dead (2005)" and others.
Romero is one of the main founders and “the father” of the horror films genre. Romero is also known for his acting work. He played in several of his works, like "Night of the Living Dead," "Land of the Dead," "Day of the Dead." Moreover, in 1991 he starred in the American thriller "The Silence of the Lambs" by Jonathan Demme.
Romero defined his career with Zombies film
According to Romero, the difference between the old and up-to-date horror movies was not the desire to make the audience feel unpleasant, but it was quite a mature and slender idea. The director said that a zombie was an ideal, universal metaphor for everything in the world. Romero inherited the humanistic Hollywood and was not an ordinary misanthrope.
“All I did was I took them out of ‘exotica’ and I made them the neighbors,” Romero said in the interview with NPR in 2014. He also added that he had never expected that his career would have been turned into the zombies' film. “I used to be the only guy in the playground,” he said. “Now, my God. I do think the popularity of the creature has come from video games, not film."
Romero’s first wife was Christine Forrest, who played a role in "Season of the Witch." His second love was Suzanne Desrocher, whom he first saw on the set of "the Living Dead" in 2005, and in some time married with. He had three children, and his son Cameron is a film director like him.
