British film director Nicolas Roeg, whose credits include The Man Who Fell To Earth and Don’t Look Now, has died at the age of 90.

His son Nicolas Roeg Jr said the director and cinematographer died on Friday night.

“He was a genuine dad,” Roeg Jr said on Saturday. “He just had his 90th birthday in August.”

Roeg’s career spanned six decades, and he was known for making provocative films and for working with major rock stars Mick Jagger and David Bowie.

A domineering and irascible presence on the set, Roeg often clashed with his actors and colleagues.

David Lean hired him as a camera operator on Lawrence of Arabia then re-hired him despite earlier discord for Doctor Zhivago, where the friction between them finally earned him the sack.

Lean was so angry he had Roeg’s stripped from the credits.ed but also erased from any mention in the credits.

Fans of the idiosyncratic director revered his auteur’s touch in films like the enigmatic Don’t Look Now (1973), based on a Daphne du Maurier short story, which starred Julie Christie and Donald Sutherland.

Cult classic sci-fi flick The Man Who Fell To Earth (1976) famously featured Bowie as an unhappy alien.

Roeg’s other credits include Performance (1970) starring Jagger, and Walkabout (1971) featuring Jenny Agutter in the Australian outback..

His last major film was The Witches, in 1990, which starred Angelica Houston.

-with AAP