George Roy Hill, director of the hit movies "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid" and "The Sting" that paired actors Robert Redford and Paul Newman, died last night at his home in New York, according to friends.
The Oscar-winning director was 81 and died of complications from Parkinson's disease, said Ms Edwin Brown, his longtime business manager.
The 1969 Western "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid" featured one of Hollywood's most famous pairings as charismatic robbers. Redford and Newman were reunited in the 1973 stylized tale of two con artists, "The Sting," which earned Hill an Academy Award for Best Director and also won the Oscar for Best Picture.
"His pairing of the two of them in 'Butch Cassidy' and 'The Sting" was really an inspirational stroke because it worked so well," said Ms Brown. "He knew what he wanted to achieve when he was making a film, and he knew how to convey that to the professionals around him."
A native of Minnesota, Hill studied at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, and at Trinity College in Dublin.