Beloved Oscar winner dies "exactly as he would have scripted it"
Award-winning Hollywood screenwriter David Seidler has died aged 86.
The playwright, best known for 2010's The Kings Speech, passed away while on a fly-fishing expedition in New Zealand.
"David was in the place he loved most in the world — New Zealand — doing what gave him the greatest peace which was fly-fishing," his manager said in a statement to The Hollywood Reporter.
"If given the chance, it is exactly as he would have scripted it."
Seidler's cause of death has not been revealed.
The British-American playwright, first moved to Hollywood - where he started his career - at the age of 40, with his first job writing Tucker: The Man and His Dreams for Francis Ford Coppola.
He also worked on the King and I and Madeline: Lost in Paris.
Seidler is best known for The King's Speech, starring Colin Firth and Helena Bonham Carter. The film won him an Oscar and BAFTA for Best Original Screenplay.
He previously told The Los Angeles Times that his interest in the story of George VI came from growing up with a stutter, just like the one Colin Firth's character had in the film.
"It began, obviously, by the fact that I was a stutterer as a kid — truly a profound stutterer," he told the publication.
"I grew up always having a great soft spot in my heart [for him], because I knew he was a stutterer, who had, if not been totally cured, at least improved to the point where he could give these very eloquent, moving, stirring wartime speeches."
Seidler is survived by his two adult children.
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