An Australian actor with rugged good looks and a surfeit of roguish charm, Rod Taylor was an actor whose big screen outings displayed a raw energy, and a willingness to take risks, both in his choice of roles and (sometimes) in his choice of movies. He came to the US in the early Fifties and soon made a name for himself as a supporting actor in a variety of well-received movies – Hell on Frisco Bay (1955), The Catered Affair (1956), Giant (1956) and Raintree County (1957).

However, it was a science fiction adaptation of an H.G. Wells novel that brought him international stardom, and throughout the Sixties he made a number of highly regarded movies that helped maintain that stardom. If the Seventies saw him slowly drop out of the spotlight, Taylor still put in good performances even when the projects didn’t match his level of commitment (it would have been interesting to see how his career would have continued if he hadn’t lost the lead in Planet of the Apes (1968) to Charlton Heston). With an unexpected appearance as Winston Churchill in Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds (2009) – he’d retired completely from acting at that point – to round off his career, Taylor has left us a raft of indelible performances that still have the power to entertain, and leaves behind a strength and an integrity few other actors of his generation could match.

1 – The Time Machine (1960)

2 – 101 Dalmatians (1961)

3 – The Birds (1963)

4 – Sunday in New York (1963)

5 – Young Cassidy (1965)

6 – The Glass Bottom Boat (1966)

7 – Hotel (1967)

8 – Zabriskie Point (1970)

9 – The Train Robbers (1973)

10 – The Picture Show Man (1977)