Rod Taylor

Rod Taylor was born on 11 January 1930 in Lidcombe, a suburb of Sydney, to William Sturt Taylor, a steel construction contractor and commercial artist, and Mona Taylor, a writer of children's books. His middle name came from his great-great-granduncle, Captain Charles Sturt, a British explorer of the Australian outback. He attended Parramatta High School and later studied at the East Sydney Technical and Fine Arts College. He worked as a commercial artist for a while, but decided to pursue acting after seeing Laurence Olivier in an Old Vic touring production of Richard III. Taylor began his acting career in Australia, appearing in radio shows, stage plays, and films. He moved to the United States in 1954 and became a citizen in 1956. He soon landed supporting roles in films such as Giant (1956), Raintree County (1957), and Separate Tables (1958). His breakthrough came in 1960 when he starred as H. George Wells in The Time Machine, George Pal's adaptation of the H.G. Wells novel. He followed this with another sci-fi classic, The Birds (1963), directed by Alfred Hitchcock and co-starring Tippi Hedren. Taylor established himself as a leading man in Hollywood, appearing in a variety of genres, from romantic comedies to action thrillers. Some of his notable films include Sunday in New York (1963), The V.I.P.s (1963), Young Cassidy (1965), The Glass Bottom Boat (1966), Dark of the Sun (1968), The Train Robbers (1973), and The Picture Show Man (1977). He also voiced Pongo in Disney's One Hundred and One Dalmatians (1961) and appeared in several TV shows, such as Hong Kong (1960-61), Bearcats! (1971), Masquerade (1983-84), and Outlaws (1986-87). Taylor continued to act until the late 1990s, when he moved into semi-retirement. His final film role was a cameo as Winston Churchill in Quentin Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds (2009). He died of a heart attack at his home in Beverly Hills on 7 January 2015, four days before his 85th birthday. He was survived by his wife Carol Kikumura and his daughter Felicia Taylor.