(CelebrityAccess) — Morgan Spurlock, the documentary filmmaker best known for his Oscar-nominated 2004 film “Super Size Me,” died on Thursday. He was 53.
His brother, Craig Spurlock, told the New York Times that the cause of death was complications of an unspecified cancer.
A native of West Virginia, Spurlock attended New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts, graduating with a BFA and launched a successful career as a playwright, winning awards for his play, The Phoenix at both the Fringe Festival and the Route 66 American Playwriting Competition in 2000.
In 2004, Spurlock released the documentary “Super Size Me” which details an experiment in which he eats three meals from the fast food restaurant McDonalds every day for a month while curtailing exercise to match what he claimed was the average American lifestyle.
During the course of the documentary experiment, Spurlock claimed to have gained 25 pounds and suffered depression and issues with his liver. However, the validity of the experiment chronicled in the documentary has subsequently been called into question due to a lack of documentation of the results and other, unrevealed factors that included Spurlock’s alleged alcohol use.
Spurlock’s other documentaries include Where in the World Is Osama Bin Laden?, which debuted in 2008 and explored America’s War On Terror, and The Greatest Movie Ever Sold, a film on the perils of product placement.
Spurlock hosted and produced the CNN series Morgan Spurlock Inside Man, which ran on the news channel for three years between 2013 and 2016. Spurlock also hosted 30 Days, a television series that featured Spurlock or another person immersing themselves in a different lifestyle or experience for 30 days. Episodes included Spurlock and his fiancée living on minimum wage for 30 days, or a devout Christian living with a Muslim family. The series ran for three seasons on FX before it was canceled in 2008.
In 2017, Spurlock posted a blog post in which he admitted to a past of sexual misconduct that included cheating on past romantic partners, and sexual harassment and that he had been accused of sexual assault while in college. Following the publication of the blog post, Spurlock stepped down from his position at Warrior Poets, the documentary film company he launched in 2004.
