LOS ANGELES — John Barry, a five-time Academy Award-winning composer of movies such as “Born Free” and “Out of Africa” who earned a prominent spot in pop-culture history by writing the scores for 11 James Bond films, including “From Russia With Love” and “Goldfinger,” has died. He was 77.

Barry died Sunday in New York, where he reportedly had lived for some time, his family said in a statement. The cause of death was not released.

“I think he’s without a doubt one of the giants of film music of the last 50 years,” Jon Burlingame, a film music historian who teaches at the University of Southern California, told the Los Angeles Times on Monday.

In a more than 40-year film composing career that began in 1960, the British-born Barry won his first two Oscars for the 1966 film “Born Free” — best original music score and best original song (for the popular title song, which he wrote with lyricist Don Black). Barry’s other Oscars for best original score were for “The Lion in Winter” (1968), “Out of Africa” (1985) and “Dances with Wolves” (1990).

His work on the Bond films in the 1960s helped launch Barry into the forefront of movie music composers.

“I think James Bond would have been far less cool without John Barry holding his hand,” fellow Bond movie composer David Arnold told BBC Radio after learning of his death.

Of Barry’s memorable arrangement of the Bond theme for “Dr. No,” Arnold told Burlingame for a 2008 article in Daily Variety: “You have the bebop-swing vibe coupled with that vicious, dark distorted electric guitar, definitely an instrument of rock ‘n’ roll.

“Sound-wise, it represented everything about the character you would want: It was cocky, swaggering, confident, dark, dangerous, suggestive, sexy, unstoppable. And he did it in two minutes.”

Barry’s long and varied list of credits as a composer includes “Zulu,” “Midnight Cowboy,” the 1976 version of “King Kong,” “Body Heat,” “The Cotton Club” and “Indecent Proposal.” A four-time Grammy Award winner, he also composed music for the 1970s TV movies “Eleanor and Franklin,” “The Glass Menagerie” and “Love Among the Ruins.”