It’s doubtful there ever existed a more iconic film critic than Roger Ebert, who passed away Thursday at the age of 70. From his beginning as a reporter at the Chicago Sun-Times in 1966 through his long-running television show ‘Sneak Previews’ and his plethora of published books, Ebert influenced the film world in a way few others can claim to match.

Ebert was not afraid to use stinging sarcasm to describe the movies he disliked, but he was also very blunt when he felt the need. One of his most famous pans was of the 2003 film ‘Brown Bunny’, which he wrote would offend audiences not due to the adult content but merely because of its “awfulness”. He lambasted the film for being boring and poorly written, leading writer/director/actor Vincent Gallo to lash out at him and insult the critic for being overweight. In typical dry fashion, Ebert responded, “It is true that I am fat, but one day I will be thin, and he will still be the director of ‘The Brown Bunny.’ ” Zing!

However, Ebert was not always so harsh in his reviews. He had a tendency to grade films not solely on a strict four star system but also compared to other similar films in a genre, explaining that while he did consider the value of the film as a whole, it wasn’t fair to compare comic book action movies to art house films. His style of criticism inevitably drew some criticism in turn, but he maintained, “When you ask a friend if ‘Hellboy’ is any good, you’re not asking if it’s any good compared to ‘Mystic River’, you’re asking if it’s any good compared to ‘The Punisher’. And my answer would be, on a scale of one to four, if ‘Superman’ is four, then ‘Hellboy’ is three and ‘The Punisher’ is two.”

Ebert was also famous for lamenting the lack of indie and art house films outside of major cities, complaining that theatres in smaller areas were “booked by computer from Hollywood with no regard for local tastes”. He was also not a fan of the MPAA’s style of rating films in regards to their appropriateness for children and was famous for refusing to award any stars to films he found morally repugnant, with recent notable entries like ‘The Human Centipede’ earning his wit and wrath. He was not afraid to include personal anecdotes in his film reviews if he felt it was warranted and lent a personal point of view to everything he wrote.

Ebert’s interest in journalism first surfaced during high school, when he began writing pieces for science fiction fanzines and co-editing his high school newspaper. He landed a reporting job at the Sun-Times in 1966 as a way to support himself while attending the University of Chicago; as luck would have it, the next year movie critic Eleanor Keane left the paper and Ebert was given the job. Juggling his career and school proved too much, so he dropped out to focus on reporting. However he maintained ties with the school as a guest lecturer, teaching a night class on film.

In 1975 Ebert became the first film critic to win the prestigious Pulitzer Prize for Criticism; at the same time as his star was rising as a newspaper critic, he launched the weekly television snow ‘Sneak Previews’ with local Chicago public broadcasting station WTTW. Three years later the show was picked up by PBS for national airplay an fellow critic Gene Siskel signed on to co-host. The duo trademarked the phrase “Two Thumbs Up” and would host multiple incarnations of their wildly popular show, verbally sparring with each other while discussing the latest film releases, until Siskel’s death in 1999.

After Siskel’s death, the show went through a series of guest hosts until Richard Roeper signed on to be the permanent co-host in 2000; the show continued to run throughout the next decade until Ebert finally decided to create a new and different show. ‘Ebert Presents: At the Movies’ premiered in 2011 and featured co-hosts Christy Lemire and Ignatiy Vishnevetsky; the show continues to air weekly.

However, Ebert certainly didn’t abandon his newspaper column for TV; he churned out reviews for the Sun-Times at an unwavering pace through his career, cranking out an average of 200 reviews per year and hitting a career high of 306 reviews in 2012. His syndication grew beyond the Sun-Times to over 200 newspapers in the United States and overseas. He also managed to publish more than twenty books and dozens of collections of his reviews, and maintained a personal website, rogerebert.com, where readers could catch up on his blog or browse his many reviews from zero to four stars.  In 1996, when the Sun-Times first entered the digital world, Ebert pushed them to put 2,000 of his film reviews online for readers to enjoy free of charge, thereby helping to lead the way for digital archives.

In 2002 Ebert was diagnosed with thyroid cancer; though his disease couldn’t keep him from his work. In 2005 he became the first critic to receive a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. In 2006 he underwent further surgery to treat his cancer; complications from the surgery left him bedridden and unable to speak, and he was forced to take a leave of absence to recover. However, as he grew stronger, Ebert returned to his beloved role of movie critic, writing new reviews for the Sun-Times in 2007, making an appearance at Ebertfest with his wife Chaz, and gradually working his way back into full-time writing. He never did regain his voice and so did not return to television, though he did adopt a computerized Mac voice he named “Alex” to communicate.

In his later years Ebert’s health continued to decline, yet he remained upbeat and continued to enjoy his work as a critic. On March 27 he posted his last film review on his website, awarding 2.5 out of 4 stars to Stephenie Meyers’ ‘The Host’. On April 2 he announced that his cancer had returned and that he would be taking a short break from his duties as a film critic in order to focus on his health, but reassured his readers that is was a “leave of presence” rather than absence, and that he hoped to return soon with new projects.

Unexpectedly, on April 4, Ebert passed away at the age of 70. He was described posthumously by his fellow movie critics such as Kenneth Turan (the Los Angeles Times) and Neil Steinberg (the Chicago Sun-Times) as one of the best-known and most influential film critics in America.