‘Spider-Man’, ‘Pretty Woman’ producer Laura Ziskin dies at 61

Washington: ‘Spider-Man’ and ‘Pretty Woman’ producer Laura Ziskin, who fought a seven-year battle against breast cancer, died on Sunday evening. She was 61.

Over a 35-year Hollywood career, Ziskin was producer or executive producer of such crowd-pleasers as ‘No Way Out’ with Kevin Costner, ‘Pretty Woman’ with Richard Gere and Julia Roberts, and ‘As Good As It Gets,’ which won Academy Awards for Jack Nicholson and Helen Hunt. A founder of the advocacy group Stand Up 2 Cancer (SU2C), Ziskin helped raise millions of dollars to support cancer research and to bring together scientists who had been studying various forms of cancer to share their information, reports Contactmusic. She produced the three ‘Spider-Man’ movies and at the time of her death was working on a fourth, ‘The Amazing Spider-Man’. Last August, in an interview with Katie Couric for Glamour magazine, Ziskin said that early mammogram tests had missed detecting her cancer. ANI