Actor Jude Law has paid tribute to Oscar-winning film director Anthony Minghella who died today.

The filmmaker - who won a Best Director Academy Award for 1996 film The English Patient - died aged 54 from a brain haemorrhage at London’s Charing Cross Hospital, where he had undergone a routine operation on his neck.

Law - who starred in Minghella’s Oscar nominated movies The Talented Mr. Ripley, Cold Mountain, and the 2006 movie Breaking and Entering - said he would miss the director "hugely."

He says, "(I’d) come to value him more as a friend than as a colleague. He was a brilliantly talented writer and director who wrote dialogue that was a joy to speak and then put it onto the screen in a way that always looked effortless.

"He made work feel like fun. He was a sweet, warm, bright and funny man who was interested in everything from football to opera, films, music, literature, people and most of all his family."