Melissa Mathison News: 'E.T.' Screenwriter Dies At 65 [VIDEO]

Screenwriter of best known movies such as E.T., The Black Stallion, and the upcoming The BFG, Melissa Mathison, ex-wife of actor Harrsion Ford, died Wednesday in Los Angeles from complications of neuroendocrine cancer, according to Entertainment Weekly.

A native of Los Angeles, Mathison was born to Richard Mathison, a journalist, and Pegeen Kieffer Mathison, a writer, publicist, and food entrepreneur. According to Entertainment Weekly, Mathison graduated from UC Berkeley before breaking into Hollywood in 1979 with The Black Stallion, an adaptation of the classic children's novel about a boy who tames a wild Arabian horse.

Harrison Ford FInds 'Indiana Jones' More Interesting Than 'Star Wars?'

Her other credits include The Escape Artist, Twilight Zone: The Movie, The Indian in the Cupboard, and Kundun.

Mathison was married to Star Wars actor Harrison Ford from 1983 t0 2004 and had two children together, Malcolm Ford and Georgia Ford.

They wed in 1983 but Mathison filed for divorce 18 years later. In 2001, following published reports alleging Ford was partying with other women and had left the marital home in Manhattan. It took another three years to reach a settlement - there was no prenup - in what is one of the most expensive celebrity marriage splits in history, according to Daily Mail.

The Oscar Nominated screen writer also worked with Martin Scorsese on Kundun, a biopic of Tibet's 14th Dalai Lama released in 1997 and commented on the death of the writer.

Harrison Ford Is 'Not' Excited To Play Han Solo In 'Star Wars: Episode VII?'

"She was a wonderful writer. The project was about the Dalai Lama but at the core was about a boy separated from his home,' she told Deadline.com. 'I think of her as being a great parent. The choices that she made were so interesting and unusual, and it was all about family. When I think of what she's written, it always comes back to family and home."

Mathison was nominated for an Oscar for penning the script for Steven Spielberg's 1982 classic E.T. The Extra Terrestrial.

In a statement Wednesday, Spielberg said: 'Melissa had a heart that shined with generosity and love and burned as bright as the heart she gave E.T.''