LONDON (AP) -- Visionary. Obsessive. Brilliant. Secretive. That was Stanley Kubrick, whose classic films included "Dr. Strangelove," "A Clockwork Orange" and "2001: A Space Odyssey."
Kubrick died Sunday at age 70, before the release of his last film. He had been at work on "Eyes Wide Shut" for two years. The film, his first since "Full Metal Jacket" in 1987, is scheduled for a mid-year release.Starring Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman, "Eyes Wide Shut" had been shrouded in the secrecy that attended all of Kubrick's later movies. "He was like family to us, and we are in shock and devastated," Cruise and Kidman said in a joint statement.
Hertfordshire police said Kubrick was pronounced dead Sunday at his rural estate, Childwickbury Manor, 25 miles northwest of London.
Following a postmortem Monday, police said Kubrick died of natural causes and that there were no suspicious circumstances.
Born in New York City, Kubrick had been based in England since the early 1960s. He used studios and locations in Britain to duplicate Vietnam and outer space.
Over a career spanning four decades, Kubrick worked infrequently and was regarded as a maverick talent -- to some, a genius.
"He copied no one, while all of us were scrambling to imitate him," director Steven Spielberg said.
War was one of Kubrick's great themes, starting with his first feature, "Fear and Desire" (1953), and again in "Paths of Glory" (1957). The horrors of nuclear war were turned into a dark satire in "Dr. Strangelove: or, How I Learned To Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb" (1964), and Vietnam was the setting for "Full Metal Jacket."
Kubrick moved freely between genres -- from a tale of sexual obsession with "Lolita" in 1962, based on the Vladimir Nabokov novel, to a nightmarish vision of the future in "A Clockwork Orange."
Kubrick was a fierce perfectionist who wouldn't do one take if he could do 100. "He gives new meaning to the word 'meticulous,"' Jack Nicholson said after working with Kubrick in "The Shining."