Lloyd Bochner
d. October 29, 2005
Lloyd Bochner, actor who played suave villains in countless TV episodes, died of cancer Oct. 29 at his Santa Monica home. He was 81. Bochner's career in television and film spanned more than five decades, mainly as a character actor who “almost always played a suave, handsome, wealthy villain,” his son Paul told the Associated Press.
Bochner began his career on radio in his native Canada when he was 11. He went on to stage and screen performances, earning two Liberty Awards, Canada's top acting honor. He started working in New York in 1950, on stage and in early television dramas such as Studio One and Kraft Television Theatre. He moved to Los Angeles in 1960 to co-star with Rod Taylor in the television series Hong Kong, playing the crown colony’s police chief. Three years later, he was also part of the repertory company that appeared in The Richard Boone Show during its single season on NBC.
Bochner starred as the scientist who deciphers an alien cookbook in “To Serve Man,” a fondly remembered episode of The Twilight Zone. He quickly became a familiar face as debonair villains in nearly every adventure series on the air, including The Man From U.N.C.L.E., The Wild Wild West, Mission: Impossible, The Green Hornet, The Girl From U.N.C.L.E., It Takes a Thief, Honey West, T.H.E. Cat, Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, Hogan’s Heroes, Columbo, McCloud, Ellery Queen, The Six Million Dollar Man and many others.
He also appeared in such films as “The Detective,” “Tony Rome,” “Point Blank,” “The Night Walker,” “The Man in the Glass Booth” and “The Naked Gun 2 ½.”
He became best known in the 1980s as a regular on Dynasty and continued to make guest shots in series such as Battlestar Galactica, Hawaii Five-0, Hart to Hart, Designing Women, Murder She Wrote, Fantasy Island and Vegas.
