Full list by date of death

James Garner

Actor

Born - 7 April 1928, Norman, Oklahoma, USA
Died - 19 July 2014

Ever-smiling, heftily-built American actor with tightly-curled black hair, a Korean War hero born James Baumgarner who took up acting in his mid twenties, and became one of the few film stars to make it big after a major success on TV - in this case the 1950s' western series Maverick. Often playing offbeat heroes who bested the bad guys by means other than violence, he later proved a genial foil for such musical comedy divas as Doris Day and Julie Andrews. Starting in featured roles, he made Brink of Hell (1956), The Girl He Left Behind (1956), Shoot-out at Medicine Bend (1957) and Sayonara (1957). After Maverick, he was given star status: The Young Invaders (1958), Up Periscope (1959), Cash McCall (1959), The Loudest Whisper (1961), Move Over, Darling (1963), The Great Escape (1963), The Americanization of Emily (1964), A Man Could Get Killed (1966), Support Your Local Sheriff! (1968), Marlowe (1969), Support Your Local Gunfighter (1971), One Little Indian (1973) and The Castaway Cowboy (1974). With his big-screen career fading, Garner found TV gold again as the hero of The Rockford Files, which ran from 1974 to 1980, with spin-off TV movies in the 1990s. Later films include Victor/Victoria (1982), an Oscar nod for Murphy's Romance (1985), Sunset (1988), The Distinguished Gentleman (1992), Maverick (1994), My Fellow Americans (1996), Twilight (1998), Space Cowboys (2000), The Notebook (2004) and the short First Night (2007), his last. He suffered a severe stroke in 2008, but made a good recovery. He died from a massive heart attack.