Paul Walker of the popular Fast and Furious films dies in Car Accident

UPDATED: The actor was shooting "Fast & Furious 7" for Universal and also was starring in the upcoming "Brick Mansions" and "Hours."

Paul Walker, best known for his role in the hit Fast and the Furious movies, died Saturday afternoon in a car accident in Valencia, Calif., The Hollywood Reporterhas confirmed. He was 40.

PHOTOS: Paul Walker and Other Notable Deaths of 2013TMZ was the first to report the news of his death.

The L.A. County Sheriff's Departmenttweeted that the crash happened around 3:30 p.m. in the 28300 block of Rye Canyon Loop. As of 8 p.m., the road was still closed, and two Los Angeles local TV stations had sent news vans to the scene.

According to TMZ, Walker was in his new Porsche GT when the single-car accident happened. The car reportedly burst into flames, with one of Walker's friends telling the local newspaper they "went through fire extinguishers" in a futile bid to fight the blaze. "We tried, we tried," Antonio Holmes told the Santa Clarita Signal.

Walker's Facebook page says he was the passenger in the car; AM radio station KHTS reports Roger Rodas, the CEO of Walker's company Always Evolving, was the driver and the car's owner.

Walker was reportedly in the area, just north of Los Angeles, for a car show and toy drive set up through his charity, ReachOut World Wide. In 2010, he flew to Chile to offer to help those injured in the 8.8 magnitude earthquake and earlier was involved in the relief effort to help survivors of the earthquake in Haiti.

He is survived by his 15-year-old daughter, Meadow.

Walker was reprising his role as Brian O'Conner in Universal's Fast & Furious 7 for director JamesWan. The movie had recently begun filming in Atlanta and was set to move to Abu Dhabi in January, but was on a break from shooting for the Thanksgiving holiday. The seventh film in the blockbuster action franchise has been slotted to hit theaters July 11.

The blue-eyed Walker, who described himself on his Twitter page as an "adrenaline junkie," did many stunts in the Fast and the Furious movies himself. He starred in a 2010 National Geographic Channel series Expedition Great White, on which he spent 11 days as part of the crew, catching and tagging great white sharks off the coast of Mexico.

He reportedly owned a pair of high-performance car companies in Valencia.