Patrick McGoohan, the creator and star of cult classic The Prisoner, has died aged 80, it was confirmed today.
He died yesterday after a short illness, his son-in-law film producer Cleve Landsberg told the Associated Press in Los Angeles.
McGoohan played the title character Six in the surreal 1960s show filmed in Portmeirion in Wales.
He also won two Emmy Awards for his work on the Peter Falk detective drama Columbo.
In more recent years he appeared as King Edward Longshanks in the 1995 Mel Gibson film Braveheart.
American-born McGoohan was a stage actor before landing TV and film roles.
The Danger Man star scripted and directed several episodes of The Prisoner in addition to serving as executive producer and starring as the lead.
The surreal show tells the story of a man who finds himself trapped in a mysterious and surreal place known as The Village, with no memory of how he arrived.
As he frantically explores his environment, he discovers that its inhabitants are identified by number instead of by name and have no memory of a prior existence or outside civilisation.
Not knowing who to trust, Number Six is driven by the desperate need to discover the truth behind The Village, which is controlled by the sinister and charismatic Number Two.
Last year, ITV confirmed that Sir Ian McKellen and Jim Caviezel will star in the network's remake of The Prisoner.
Caviezel will take the role of Number Six while McKellen will appear throughout the series as Number Two.
McGoohan spent his childhood in Ireland and began acting in England, playing at the Old Vic and in the West End.
In 1955 he landed a five-year Rank contract and in the early 1960s McGoohan starred in All Night Long, an attempt at re-staging Shakespeare's Othello in the context of a fashionable London jazz party.
The Prisoner was initially seen as a risky project, but became a huge cult success. He wrote the show under the name Paddy Fitz.
In 1972 McGoohan returned to live in the US, where he continued to work in film and television.
PA