John Barry, who composed the score for 11 James Bond films, won five Oscars and was awarded an OBE in an illustrious career that saw him work on a number of other acclaimed film scores, including "Born Free," "Midnight Cowboy" and "Out of Africa."

He was born in York as John Barry Prendergast, the son of a classical pianist mother and a father who owned a number of theatres and cinemas in Lancashire and Yorkshire. His earliest encounters with the world of film came from helping out his father at his cinemas. Barry first found fame with the John Barry Seven, a band he founded that went on to have a number of hits. He then started working on music for the movies and his career took off when he arranged Monty Norman's score for the first 007 film, "Dr No." It led to Barry working on other films in the series, including "Goldfinger" and "You Only Live Twice."

While he will forever be associated with his Bond films oeuvre, he worked on many other scores and his Oscar wins were for "Born Free" (for best song and best score), "The Lion in Winter," "Out of Africa" and "Dances With Wolves." Among the other notable films he worked on were "The Ipcress File," "Body Heat" and "The Cotton Club." He received the Bafta fellowship in 2005 in recognition of his services to film music. Barry also worked on a number of television themes and later in his career released albums of his own music. He co-wrote a musical of the Graham Greene novel Brighton Rock, which opened in London's Almeida Theatre in 2004. His last film score was for "Enigma," the 2001 film about second world war code-breakers.

Source: The Guardian, UK