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| David Bowie in Merry Christmas Mr Lawrence |
His director son Duncan Jones confirmed the news on Twitter and a statement was released on his official social media accounts.
It read: "David Bowie died peacefully today surrounded by his family after a courageous 18-month battle with cancer.
"While many of you will share in this loss, we ask that you respect the family's privacy during their time of grief."
Bowie - who had only released his latest album Blackstar on his birthday last Friday - first rose to global prominence with 1972’s The Rise And Fall Of Ziggy Stardust And The Spiders From Mars and went on to forge a career lasting more than four decades.
He also made an early move into acting, starring in a number of memorable roles. In 1976, he played an alien in Nicolas Roeg's surreal The Man Who Fell To Earth (due to screen at next month's Glasgow Film Festival for its anniversary) and in 1978 he starred in Marlene Dietrich's final film Just A Gigolo.
In the Eighties he appeared in a string of films, including a central role in Nagisa Ôshima's study of Japanese PoW brutality Merry Christmas Mr Lawrence, the glamorous goblin king in Labyrinth and Pontius Pilate in Martin Scorsese’s The Last Temptation Of Christ.
In 1992 he played a small but pivotal role in David Lynch's Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me and in 2006, he played Nikola Tesla in The Prestige. The following decade his work was the subject of a dedicated David Bowie Film Festival in London.
His songs were also used on the soundtracks of dozens of films.
He is survived by his son, daughter Alexandria and wife Iman, whom he married in 2002.
