Actor

Actor

Born: September 13, 1939; Died: September 10, 2014.

Richard Kiel, who has died aged 74, suffered from a rare medical condition that resulted in extreme height and pronounced facial bones. He was never going to be a matinee idol, but he became one of the most iconic movie characters of the Seventies after taking on the role of Jaws in the 1977 James Bond film The Spy Who Loved Me.

Like most Bond villains, Jaws was meant to be killed off, eaten by a shark. But the film-makers realised the steel-toothed giant had a certain perverse appeal, a little like Frankenstein's monster, and director Lewis Gilbert filmed an alternative ending in which Jaws bites the shark and survives to fight another day.

This was the era of Roger Moore and although the 007 films remained great fun they had become even more detached from reality than in the Connery era.

"MGM had this special blue-collar screening, with wives and children," Kiel told me a couple of years ago when I interviewed him on the occasion of the release of the films in a new boxed set. "They snuck me in the back door and I didn't know whether I would live or die until I popped out of the water and the audience cheered and applauded."

Jaws returned in Moonraker (1979). He starts the film as a baddie, but teams up with Bond after falling in love with the diminutive Dolly and realising they have no place in villain Hugo Drax's vision of a perfect new civilisation in space. Moonraker became the highest-grossing film in the series.

Kiel never found another part quite like Jaws, but the iconic nature of the role ensured a string of lucrative offers and later films include Cannonball Run II (1984), the Clint Eastwood western Pale Rider (1985), the comedy Happy Gilmore (1996) and Disney's Tangled (2010), for which he voiced Vladimir, a giant who collects ceramic unicorns.

Born in Detroit in 1939, Richard Dawson Kiel was determined to become an actor despite the effects of the hormonal condition acromegaly - he was 7ft 2in tall.

He earned a living selling cemetery plots, teaching maths and serving as a nightclub bouncer, while looking for film and television work. He worked his way through a directory of possible agents from A to Z with little success. He finally managed to get himself a couple of roles as heavies in television and secured an agent.

Other roles followed in such series as The Twilight Zone (1962), playing a dome-headed alien, The Man from U.N.C.L.E. (1964-65) and The Monkees (1967). He had a recurring role as a villainous dwarf's henchman in The Wild, Wild West (1965-66) and co-starred with William Shatner in the western television series Barbary Coast (1975-76), which led to Jaws.

Jaws was famous for his metal teeth, but they were an ordeal for Kiel. "They were made of chromium steel, they went up to the roof of your mouth and they would kind of gag you," he said. "The rather stoic look was me trying to keep from throwing up."

Off-screen Kiel was the proverbial gentle giant, a family man and Christian, quietly spoken and interested in the environment, though he struggled with alcoholism for a while, before overcoming his addiction.

In 1992, he sustained a head injury in a road accident that affected his balance and latterly he used a wheelchair. His first marriage ended in divorce in the early 1970s. He is survived by his second wife and four children.