FRESNO, Calif.(AP)
-- Richard Kiel, the towering actor best known for portraying steel-toothed
villain
Jaws in a pair of James Bond films, has died. He was 74.
Kelley Sanchez,
director of communications at Saint Agnes Medical Center, confirmed Wednesday
that Kiel was a
patient at the hospital and died. Kiel 's
agent, Steven Stevens, also confirmed his death. Both declined to provide
further details.
The 7-foot-2-inch
performer famously played the cable-chomping henchman who tussled with Roger
Moore's Bond in 1977's "The Spy Who Loved Me" and 1979's
"Moonraker." Bond quipped of the silent baddie: "His name's
Jaws. He kills people."
Despite appearing
in several other films and TV shows, such as "The Man from
U.N.C.L.E." and "The Longest Yard," the role of Jaws was an
iconic one Kiel
could never escape.
"To this day,
I go out in sunglasses and a hat because people will shout 'Hey, Jaws!' at me
from across the street," he told the Daily Mail earlier this year.
"The only way I can explain it is that he's like the Road Runner, which
Coyote keeps trying to blow up, but he keeps going."
Kiel's other
memorable roles included bullying golf spectator Mr.
Larson in "Happy
Gilmore," lethal Dr. Loveless's assistant Voltaire in "The Wild, Wild
West" and extraterrestrial Kanamit in "The Twilight Zone." He
also reprised the character of Jaws for several James Bond video games and
voiced the thug Vlad in the animated Disney film "Tangled."
Born 13 September
1939 in Detroit , Kiel
began appearing in TV shows and films in the 1960s, debuting in an episode of
the Western series "Laramie ."
He published an autobiography in 2002
titled "Making It Big in the
Movies."
Richard leaves
behind his wife Dianne and four children.
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