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By Bloomberg

Rod Taylor, the rugged Australian actor who starred in Alfred Hitchcock’s “The Birds,” has died in Los Angeles. He was 84.

He died at home surrounded by his family, his daughter, Felicia Taylor, a former CNN correspondent, said in a statement.

“My dad loved his work,” she said, according to CNN. “Being an actor was his passion -- calling it an honorable art and something he couldn’t live without.”

Taylor’s Hollywood film career started in the 1950s, when he had supporting roles in “Giant” (1956), with James Dean, and “Rainbow County” (1957), with Montgomery Clift. His first leading role was in “The Time Machine” (1960), George Pal’s adaptation of the classic H.G. Wells story. Taylor also provided the voice of Pongo in Walt Disney Co.’s “101 Dalmatians” (1961).

Probably his most famous role was in “The Birds” (1963), based on a Daphne du Maurier short story. The film, about an attack by flocks of birds on a northern California town, was ranked No. 7 on the American Film Institute’s list of all-time greatest thrillers, when it was compiled in 2001.

Rodney Sturt Taylor was born Jan. 11, 1930, in Lidcombe, Sydney, the only child of William Sturt Taylor, a steel construction contractor, and Mona Stewart Taylor, a writer of plays and children’s books. Taylor initially trained as an artist and decided to pursue a career as an actor after seeing Laurence Olivier in a touring production of “Richard III.”

Film Roles

“Sir Larry’s performance that night clinched the deal,” Taylor told Film Review magazine in 1971. “After seeing him, I knew I would never be anything but an actor.”

Other film roles during the 1960s included “The V.I.P.s” (1963), with Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor, “Hotel” (1967) and “The Mercenaries” (1968). He appeared with Doris Day in “Do Not Disturb” (1965) and “The Glass Bottomed Boat” (1966).

In the 1970s Taylor worked mostly in television, going on to appear in series including “The Oregon Trail” (1976-77), “Falcon Crest” (1988-90) and “Walker, Texas Ranger” (1996-2000).

His last film appearance was a cameo as Winston Churchill in Quentin Tarantino’s “Inglorious Basterds” (2009).