Gilbert Adair, the acclaimed critic who had some of his own novels turned into successful films, has died aged 66.

Adair won the respect of cineastes with volumes such as A Night at the Pictures (1985), Myths & Memories (1986), Hollywood's Vietnam (1981), Flickers (1995), Surfing the Zeitgeist (1997) and with his translation of the letters of François Truffaut (published in 1990). He was a prolific journalist, writing a regular column for the Sunday Times in the 1990s, as well as for this paper – last year he interviewed the French film-maker Alain Resnais.

It was in cinematic adaptation that he found wider fame: the 1997 film Love and Death on Long Island, starring John Hurt as mordant writer Giles De'Ath, and Jason Priestley as the teen star he strikes up a friendship with, was based on Adair's 1990 novel of the same name.

Bernardo Bertolucci's successful 2003 film The Dreamers, about an incestuous menage a trois between students at the time of the May 1968 riots, was adapted by Adair from his novel The Holy Innocents. Adair himself moved to Paris in 1968, returning to London in 1980.

His first screenwriting commission was in collaboration with Raúl Ruiz on the 1981 horror The Territory; the two teamed up again for 2006's Klimt, starring John Malkovich, and for 2010's A Closed Book, starring Tom Conti as a distinguished author who hires assistant Daryl Hannah after he's blinded in a horrific accident.

At the time of his death, Adair was writing a stage version of Love and Death on Long Island. In 2009, he completed the final volume in the Evadne Mount murder mystery trilogy.