The author and Fairfax columnist Sam De Brito has been found dead in Sydney.
De Brito, 46, was discovered in his North Bondi home on Monday morning.
Police were not treating the writer’s death as a suicide, but the coroner was investigating. His mother found his body on Monday morning, police said.
“The family and friends of the writer and journalist Sam de Brito have been devastated by his sudden death this morning,” his family said in a statement published by Fairfax Media.
They said De Brito “revelled in parenthood and was a wonderful and devoted father to his young daughter, Anoushka”.
“He will also be remembered as a loving son, brother, nephew, uncle, cousin and friend, as well as a distinguished columnist and author,” the statement sad.
“His family asks for privacy at this time as they grieve for the loss of Sam and await the results of a coroner’s report.”
Across two decades De Brito wrote for newspapers in Australia and the US, most recently the Fairfax column All Men Are Liars on men’s issues and family life. His most recent column, about the joy of sharing a bed with his daughter, was published on Sunday.
“Homo sapiens and our sibling, Homo erectus, survived more than two million years sleeping with their children and when I draw my daughter into my chest, smell her hair and mumble love in the quiet hours of the night, I feel more a father, more human, than any other time in my day,” he wrote.
De Brito said his daughter was the most important thing in his life and had changed him from being a “pathological narcissist”.
De Brito’s confessional style of journalism led to him admitting he had taken cocaine, slept with a prostitute, suffered from depression and had genital herpes.
But it was his columns about relationships, custody battles and feminism that sparked the most debate – and the frequent mentions of his beloved daughter Anoushka, 5, that illustrated his softer side.
He came from a famous family of journalists, starting his career as a copyboy on the Sunday Telegraph before joining Fairfax Media in 2006.
His father was South African-born journalist Gus de Brito and his mother Julie co-founded the company Media Monitors. BothSam and his sister Kate followed Gus into journalism at News Corp. Kate de Brito had a long career at News as an editor and writer and recently joined website MamaMia as editor. De Brito’s brother-in-law Luke McIlveen is the editor-in-chief of Daily Mail Australia.
His stepfather was another legendary Sydney journalist, Sean Flannery, who died in 2011 after a long battle with cancer.
Before Flannery’s death Sam paid tribute to both men: “I have two fathers – Gus de Brito who is dead and Sean Flannery. Neither man was anything other than loving and patient with me. Gus’s death affected me profoundly, as I’m sure Sean’s will too one day, and it’s not hyperbole to say it was at the root of a decade-long depression.”
De Brito also wrote five books, including The Lost Boys and Hello Darkness.
He wrote, directed and starred in the 1998 comedy film Revenge, Inc, and directed the short film Deus Ex Machina. His other writing credits include episodes for TV shows Water Rats, Stingers and White Collar Blue.
Fellow journalists and readers of de Brito’s column paid tribute to the author on Twitter.
“Such terrible news. Fairfax columnist Sam de Brito has died. Our thoughts are with his family and friends,” Duska Sulicich, editor of the Sunday Age, said.
The editor of Mamamia, Mia Freedman, said the best job De Brito had, by his own reckoning, “was being a dad”.
“My heart breaks for your family & beloved daughter,” Freedman wrote.
“Sam de Brito wrote with originality, diversity of subject, and a lovely undertone of ‘screw you if you don’t like it’,” said Anthony Sharwood, News Ltd journalist and former Fairfax chief of staff.
News.com.au editor-at-large Melissa Hoyer said the news was “incredibly shocking”.
Daily Life columnist Clementine Ford tweeted: “Sam de Brito and I had our differences, but I’m incredibly saddened to hear of his passing. Thoughts with his family, esp his little girl.”
