Film has lost an legend: Milos Forman, a multi-Academy Award-winning film director, screenwriter, and actor, died Friday, The New York Times reports. He was 86 years old.

Forman's agent, Dennis Aspland, confirmed the news, but no cause of death has been given. Forman died in a hospital in Danbury, Connecticut. His home was in Warren, Connecticut.

Born in former Czechoslovakia in 1932, Forman came to the United States toward the end of the 1960s amid political turmoil. He had been part of the Czechoslavak New Wave, a subversive art movement. One of his most controversial films at the time was 1967's "The Firemen's Ball," which was banned for a number of years in his homeland.

In the United States, Forman also made a name for himself. He directed the iconic 1975 comedy-drama "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest." The film is still considered one of the best of all time, and it is one of the few to ever sweep the five major Academy Award categories. Forman's second Oscar for best director came for 1984's "Amadeus," a period drama about the composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.

Although "Cuckoo's Nest" and "Amadeus" are perhaps Forman's best known films to an American audience, he continued to make boundary-pushing films in Hollywood and beyond. His work was well-regarded in his homeland, now the Czech Republic; the Czech media and film industry have been honoring him since news of his death broke, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

Forman was married three times during his life, and he is survived by his third wife, Martina Formanova, whom he met while she was his production assistant. The pair had twin sons.

[via: The New York Times]