ACCLAIMED actress Billie Whitelaw has died aged 82.
Famous for her film roles including the Omen, she was also well known for her work alongside Irish playwright Samuel Beckett.
Whitelaw also starred in the 1990 movie The Krays and appeared in police comedy Hot Fuzz in 2007.
She was made a CBE in 1991.
Her son, Matthew Muller, said that she died in the early hours of Sunday morning at a London nursing home.
"I could not have asked for a more loving mum," he said.
"She had an incredible career - but first and foremost she was my mum, and that's who I will miss."
"When I was five years old, she nursed me through meningitis and, in the last few years of her life, I was there for her as well.
"It is difficult to know what to say when your mum dies, I just want the theatrical world to know what happened."
Muller said that his mother had not been well for about a year and had deteriorated quickly in recent months. He said that the pair were very close and said he visited regularly.
"She knew I was there. I didn't need a lot of conversation with her, as long as she knew that I was with her, that was fine," he said.
Whitelaw made her radio acting debut aged just 11.
In 1950, she made her stage debut in Bradford in a performance of Pink String and Sealing Wax.
The award-winning actress also made a number of TV appearances, including in the BBC's Dixon of Dock Green.
During her career, she won a British Academy Award for best newcomer for her role in Hell is a City. She also won Best Supporting Actress for her part in Twisted Nerve.
But in her autobiography, Billie Whitelaw . . . Who He?, she said it was her work with Beckett that generated most interest.
Without their association, she wrote, "nobody would have been remotely interested in my autobiography."
She was married to actor Peter Vaughan between 1952 and 1966 and then later to German actor and writer Robert Muller.
In a newspaper interview in 1997, she said death did not scare her.
She said: "Death's not one of those things that frighten the life out of me."
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