LOS ANGELES (AP) – Rod Taylor, the suave Australian actor whose brawny good looks made him a leading man for films ranging from Westerns to romantic comedies, has died. He was 84.
Taylor died in Los Angeles on Wednesday, his daughter, Felicia Taylor, told the Los Angeles Times http://lat.ms/14DPYvs). The Associated Press was not immediately able to contact her.
Taylor’s breakthrough came in 1960 with “The Time Machine,” George Pal’s special effects marvel in which Taylor’s dogged British inventor transports himself into a future where he witnesses world wars, nuclear annihilation and, finally, the rise of a new society.
From there, his career went on to blossom in Westerns (“The Train Robbers” with John Wayne), thrillers (Alfred Hitchcock’s “The Birds”), dramas (John Ford’s “Young Cassidy”) and romantic comedies (“Sunday in New York” with Jane Fonda and “Do Not Disturb” and “The Glass Bottom Boat” with Doris Day).
A curiosity was the 1970 “Zabriskie Point,” Italian Michelangelo Antonioni’s venture into American filming. A murky attack on American mendacity that was filmed largely in Death Valley, it was a failure.