James Foley has died at the age of 71

His publicist explained to The Hollywood Reporter that James "died peacefully in his sleep earlier this week" after a "years-long struggle" with the disease.

As well as his cinematic work, James also worked with the Queen of Pop on her 'Live to Tell', 'Papa Don't Preach' and 'True Blue' music videos under the name Peter Percher and was best man at her wedding to now-former husband Sean Penn in 1985.

After graduating from New York University and then USC in Los Angeles, he was able to jumpstart his career thanks to a chance meeting.

He told Film Freak Central: "I was very lucky, and in the perverse calculus of Hollywood I was in the last year of film school and shared a house with a guy. There was a woman who was pursuing my friend so we had this film school party, which consisted of people projecting their student films onto a white wall and getting stoned.

"And this girl came. Hal Ashby was pursuing her - she was pursuing my friend and Hal was pursuing her - and Hal called her up and asked to come to this party full of film students. Just as he walked through the door, my film was showing on the wall. I'll never know whether he was being polite or anything, but he told me he liked it and stuff and he was going to form a company that was going to produce other people's movies and what did I want to do? I could write something and direct it."