ANDREW LESNIE, the Oscar-winning Australian cinematographer on the “Lord of the Rings” films, has died at the age of 59.

    The Sydney native, who won an Oscar in 2002 for his work on the first “Lord of the Rings” film, is believed to have suffered a heart attack Monday.

    Russell Crowe, who recently worked with Lesnie on his directorial debut “The Water Diviner,” was among the first to react to the news.

    “The master of the light, genius Andrew Lesnie has passed on,” he tweeted.

    Film critic Harry Knowles, who got to know Lesnie on the set of “Lord of the Rings,” also paid tribute, recalling his “many great memories with that man.”

    “In the 14 days I was on set of the original LOTR shoot, I swear I never saw Andrew Lesnie not smiling huge and making others feel the same,” Knowles tweeted.

    “Andrew Lesnie and Peter Jackson would giggle behind the camera together like the most mischievous pair of movie masters that I’ve seen.”

    A spokesman from the Australian Cinematographers Society said, “We have been advised of the sudden death of Andrew,” adding that the filmmaker’s family would provide an official statement later.

    Jackson hired Lesnie for his “Lord of the Rings” trilogy after seeing his work on “Babe,” the Australian film about a talking pig. “I’d never worked with him or even met him before, but he’d shot the ‘Babe’ films and I thought they looked amazing, the way he’d used backlight and the sun and natural light to create a very magical effect,” Jackson said in a 2004 interview.

    Over the 12-year span of making the “Lord of the Rings” and “The Hobbit” films, Lesnie was also the director of photography on Jackson’s remake of “King Kong” and the crime drama “The Lovely Bones.”

    His other credits included “Rise of the Planet of the Apes,” “I Am Legend,” starring Will Smith, and “The Last Airbender,” directed by M. Night Shyamalan. (SD-Agencies)