Blake Edwards, the highly regarded director behind "Breakfast at Tiffany's" and many of the "Pink Panther" films, died Thursday (December 16) at the age of 88, according to Variety.
Edwards began his career in Hollywood in the mid-1940s, when he co-wrote a Western called "Panhandle." He went on to write several other films and created a popular radio series, "Richard Diamond, Private Detective." He assembled a résumé of feature-film directing credits as well, but his first breakout success came on the small screen in 1958 with "Peter Gunn," a TV series about a detective that was known for its Henry Mancini score.
At the turn of the decade, he hopped into the director's chair for "Breakfast at Tiffany's" after John Frankenheimer dropped out. The movie became a critical and box-office smash, earning five Oscar nominations, including one for Audrey Hepburn. The next year, Edwards directed another Oscar-nominated flick, the drama "Days of Wine and Roses," which nabbed five nods.
Over the course of his career, Edwards would garner one Oscar nomination (in 1982, for writing "Victor/Victoria") and an honorary Oscar in 2003 "in recognition of his writing, directing and producing an extraordinary body of work for the screen."
After mixing dramatic and comedic work, Edwards turned his energies toward slapstick comedy, co-writing and directing 1964's "The Pink Panther" with Peter Sellers as Jacques Clouseau in what became an iconic recurring role for the actor. Edwards would go on to direct other films in the series, including "A Shot in the Dark," "The Return of the Pink Panther" and "The Pink Panther Strikes Again."
Born in 1922, Edwards had a son and daughter with his first wife before they divorced. He married "Mary Poppins" star Julie Andrews in 1969 and the couple adopted two Vietnamese children. Andrews and his children were reportedly by his side when he died.
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