Blow director Demme dies

Blow was biggest movie of Ted Demme's career

The director and producer of the hit movie Blow, Ted Demme, has died at the age of 38.

The film and television director was pronounced dead at the Santa Monica-UCLA Medical Centre in California on Sunday.

The cause of death has yet to be determined and an autopsy is due to be conducted shortly.

Lieutenant Cheryl MacWillie of the Los Angeles County Coroner's Office said Mr Demme had been rushed to hospital by paramedics in full cardiac arrest.

Penelope Cruz played a selfish wife in Blow

Mr Demme's directing career began in television with shows such as Homicide: Life on the Streets before moving into feature films.

His uncle was Oscar-winning director Jonathan Demme, whose credits include Philadelphia, Married to the Mob and Silence of the Lambs.

Mr Demme directed several small comedies including The Ref and Who's the Man before securing bigger names for his movies.

His 1996 film Beautiful Girls starred Miro Sorvino, Uma Thurman and Matt Dillon in a tale of a high-school reunion.

Cocaine

In 1999 he won an Emmy Award for outstanding made for television movie A Lesson Before Dying, on which he was an executive producer.

But his biggest hit was the critically acclaimed Blow, starring Johnny Depp and Penelope Cruz.

The 2001 movie told the true-life story of George Jung, the man credited with introducing cocaine on a mass scale into America from Columbia in the late 1970s.

Mr Demme lived in West Hollywood with his wife Amanda Scheer-Demme, a music supervisor on many of her husband's films.