Celebrity Biographies
rod taylor
Australian Rod Taylor, the famous protagonist of Alfred Hitchcock’s “The Birds”, died on January 7, 2015, at the age of 84, at his residence in Los Angeles, where he was surrounded by his family, as a result of cardiac arrest. “My father loved his work,” said his daughter Felicia.
Born on January 11, 1930, in Sydney, Rodney Sturt Taylor was the only child of William, a construction entrepreneur, and Mona Thompson, a children’s writer. He decided that he wanted to pursue acting after attending a performance of actor Laurence Olivier on tour in Australia.
He began his career in his country, first on radio, and in his first film, King of the Coral Sea , he played an American. He soon launched into the Hollywood adventure. He appeared briefly in the blockbuster Giant , where he is credited as Rodney Taylor, playing the diplomat Elizabeth Taylor breaks off her engagement to marry Rock Hudson .
Subsequently, Rod Taylor participated in titles such as The Tree of Life , Wedding Banquet and Born Free , before playing the lead in Time on His Hands , an adaptation of the novel “The Time Machine” by HG Wells . George Pal ‘s film is considered one of the great B-series science fiction titles.
But his best-remembered role was the successful lawyer who enters Tippi Hedren ‘s shop looking for a pet for her aunt, in Alfred Hitchcock ‘s The Birds . In the field of animation, he was selected by Walt Disney himself to give the voice to Pongo, the leading dog in 101 Dalmatians .
After titles like The Rebel Dreamer , Zabriskie Point , by Michelangelo Antonioni or Train Robbers , along with John Wayne , he became a great television star in the 1980s, with series like Masquerade, about the Cold War. He shot in Spain the film Marbella, a hit of five stars , from 1985, together with Fernando Fernán Gómez and Paco Rabal .
Divorced from model Peggy Williams, he got married to another, Mary Hilem, mother of the aforementioned Felicia, a CNN financial analyst. He was currently paired with Carol Kikumura. His last film job was his brief portrayal of Winston Churchill in Quentin Tarantino ‘s Inglourious Basterds , for which he won a Screen Actors Guild Award.