MICHAEL Sheard, who played Admiral Ozzel in The Empire Strikes Back, Hitler in Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade, and the fearsome Mr Bronson on Grange Hill, died from cancer yesterday, on the Isle of Wight, where he lived. He was 67.

On the big screen he worked with Spielberg and Lucas, Sean Connery and David Niven, but it was on television that he made the most indelible impression on a generation of young British viewers, as the deputy head in the hit series Grange Hill between 1985 and 1989.

A disciplinarian, renowned for his bow-tie, toupee, chilly demeanour and a sense of humour by-pass, he struck terror into his quivering subjects with the catchphrase "You, Boy!". It was latterly adopted as the name of the fanzine published by Sheard's appreciation society.

Sheard was best known to British viewers as Mr Bronson and to international audiences as Admiral Ozzel, but his resume is dominated by a series of militaristic Germans, from a junior officer in the PoW drama The McKenzie Break to the Fuhrer himself, portraying Hitler on film and television on no fewer than five occasions.

Surprisingly, however, Sheard came from Aberdeen, where his father was a minister. He said his original name was Perkins and he adopted his mother's maiden name when he became an actor, though the family yesterday insisted he was born Michael Lawson Sheard, in Aberdeen, in 1938, two years earlier than the date listed in reference sources.

He decided to become an actor after seeing the PoW film The Wooden Horse (1950) as a boy, appeared in school and church productions and trained at Rada, the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, in London, during which time he seemingly lost his Scottish accent.

For National Service he joined the RAF and his confident manner and speaking voice led to his casting in the role of camp telephonist.

By the mid-1960s he was making regular appearances on television, often playing a policeman or other authority figure. He turned up on such popular television series as Dixon of Dock Green, The Likely Lads and Doctor Who, on which he had several different roles over the years, and made his film debut in The McKenzie Break in 1970.

More German roles followed, on television as Himmler to Frank Finlay's Hitler in The Death of Adolf Hitler (1973), and in the films England Made Me (1973), Force 10 from Navarone (1978), the first of four films with Harrison Ford, The Riddle of the Sands and Escape to Athena (both 1979).

He was a U-Boat captain in Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981), the German construction site boss Herr Grunwald on the first series of Auf Wiedersehen, Pet (1983-84) and Goering's double in 'Allo, 'Allo (1992). But it was Hitler himself who was to provide Sheard with an almost regular source of income.

He agreed to play the Nazi dictator only after discussing it with his wife, Ros, who was of Jewish descent, and went on to portray him in Rogue Male (1976), the sci-fi series The Tomorrow People (1978), The Dirty Dozen: The Next Mission (1985), Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989) and Hitler of the Andes (2003), a dramatisation based on FBI files of how Hitler might have escaped to South America.

The part of Admiral Ozzel secured him an international cult following among Star Wars fans. He played Darth Vader's admiral in The Empire Strikes Back (1980), but a tactical mistake provoked the wrath of his master, who strangled him using the Force.

Sheard said that, for him, it was just another job, but he felt pressurised into taking it by his children. He was especially proud of his death scene and told one interviewer: "George (Lucas) came up to me and said, 'You gave me the biggest laugh. You died brilliantly', and funnily enough everybody says the same."

Apart from Hitler, his longest-running role, and probably his most successful, was that of Maurice "Charlie" Bronson on Grange Hill. The series had been conceived as a sort of children's soap opera, showing school life in a new and realistic way and confronting serious issues as an adult soap would.

Sheard joined the cast in 1985 and it was during his years that Grange Hill famously engaged with the question of juvenile drug use, when the popular character Zammo became addicted to heroin.

It may well be that Hitler was the perfect preparation for the classroom dictator that struck a chord with many viewers. "He was scary, but as an actor Mr Bronson was a lovely part to play, " Sheard told one interviewer.

Sheard himself contributed to the look of the wellgroomed bully. "Mr Bronson was a dinosaur and when we were discussing what he would wear, I felt that he would always be smartly dressed and thought that a bow-tie would finish off the ensemble."

The chilly, or chilling, exterior masked a hunger for power and ultimately a thwarted ambition. "He always wanted to be the headmaster but that was never to happen, the part was much better with him wanting it, " said Sheard.

In recent years Sheard wrote four volumes of memoirs and was a regular guest at fan conventions. He is survived by his wife and three children.

Michael Sheard, actor;

born June 18, 1938, died August 31, 2005.