LOS ANGELES - American veteran director James Foley, whose films included Glengarry Glen Ross (1992) and the Fifty Shades Of Grey sequels (2017 and 2018), and who also worked on the hit television series House Of Cards (2013 to 2018), died this week at his home in Los Angeles. He was 71.

His death came after a year-long battle with brain cancer, according to Mr Taylor Lomax of ID, the firm that represents Foley.

Foley made his directorial debut with the film Reckless (1984), a drama about a high school romance between a rebellious, motorcycle-driving football player and a cheerleader. In the decades that followed, he built a career directing movies, television shows and music videos, working with some of Hollywood’s biggest stars.

Among his most celebrated works is the film adaptation of Glengarry Glen Ross, the play by American playwright David Mamet that won the Pulitzer Prize for drama in 1984. The movie, about real estate salesmen trying to make ends meet in a tough economy, starred Al Pacino, Jack Lemmon, Alec Baldwin, Ed Harris and Alan Arkin.

Foley also directed Fifty Shades Darker (2017) and Fifty Shades Freed (2018), the final two instalments of the Fifty Shades Of Grey franchise (2015 to 2018). Those films were adapted from the second and third books of the Fifty Shades trilogy by British author E. L. James.

Foley told the The Hollywood Reporter in 2017 that he was pleased that his career had not been pigeonholed.

“I think in terms of what fascinates me and what intrigues me and what I feel is engaging for the year that you spend making the movie, what’s personally engaging, not adhering to any kind of conventions,” he said.

Foley was born on Dec 28, 1953, in New York City and grew up on Staten Island. He studied psychology and graduated from the State University of New York at Buffalo in 1974.

He planned to attend medical school, but he decided instead to pursue directing after taking a six-week film production course at New York University. He went on to earn a Master of Fine Arts at the University of Southern California’s School of Cinematic Arts in 1979.