Leon Vitali, a long-time collaborator with film director Stanley Kubrick, has died aged 74.

The official Twitter channel for Kubrick said in a tweet: “It is with the greatest of sadness that we have to tell you that the mainstay of a vast number of Kubrick’s films, Leon Vitali, passed away peacefully last night. Our thoughts are with his family and all that new and loved him.”

Vitali started his acting career in the early 1970s, with small roles in a number of TV hits, such as Z Cars, Van der Valk and Dixon of Dock Green.

After appearing in Please Sir! he went on to have a regular role in its successor The Fenn Street Gang, as the character Peter Craven.

In 1974, he met Stanley Kubrick, and was offered the part of Lord Bullingdon in the film director’s movie Barry Lyndon, and the pair are said to have bonded.

The film is now much less famous than A Clockwork Orange, 2001: A Space Odyssey and The Shining, but it won four Oscars, and was nominated for three more – more than any of Kubrick’s other films.

It was the start of a collaboration that would see Vitali act as Kubrick’s assistant for a series of further films, including Golden Globe-nominated Eyes Wide Shut and Oscar-nominated Full Metal Jacket, as well as The Shining.

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He also took on another acting role in Eyes Wide Shut, playing the part of Red Cloak.

A 2018 documentary on Vitali called Filmworker revealed that since Kubrick’s death in 1999, he had continued to work on the legendary directors film and legacy.

Filmworker credits Vitali with finding and recruiting the child star of The Shining, Danny Lloyd, to play the role of Danny, Jack Nicholson’s psychic son, and then coaching him to get the best performance out of him.

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