Meryl Streep led the tributes to Robert Altman last night as Hollywood mourned the loss of one of its most important directors. The actress — who starred in Altman’s final film, A Prairie Home Companion — said that she was deeply saddened. “What a gent, what a guy, what a great heart,” she said. “There’s no one like him and we’ll miss him so.”
Sophia Loren, the Italian icon, who worked with Altman in his 1994 satire on the fashion industry Prêt-à-Porter, said cinema had lost an extraordinary man. “I am extremely sad. Another giant has left us,” she said.
Altman’s most recent visit to London was to direct Arthur Miller’s Ressurection Blues at the Old Vic Kevin Spacey, the theatre’s artistic director, said he felt privileged to have worked with him. “Robert Altman was a truly unique director and an extraordinary man,” he said.