Richard Kiel, who played Jaws in two James Bond movies, is seen in this file photo dated November 18, 2002. Kiel, 74, died in hospital in Fresno, California on Wednesday.
AFP
Richard Kiel, who played the towering, steel-toothed baddie "Jaws" in two James Bond movies, has died. He was 74.
The 7-foot-2 inch (2.18-metre) US actor, who made a career impersonating giants and villains, passed away on Wednesday in the Saint Agnes Medical Center in Fresno, California, hospital spokeswoman Kelley Sanchez told AFP.
His representatives Andrew Boyle and Gareth Owen called Kiel "a giant of a man in every respect".
"We were honoured to know him and be part of his life," they said in a statement.
Kiel would have been 75 on Saturday.
Besides Jaws, Kiel appeared opposite Adam Sandler in the 1996 comedy Happy Gilmore and also voiced Vlad in Disney's Oscar-nominated animated film Tangled.
But he hit the big time with his 007 performances. Kiel was an immediate hit with filmgoers in The Spy Who Loved Me (1977) fighting 007 star Roger Moore, and returned two years later in Moonraker.
"I had convinced the producer that Jaws should have some characteristics that were human to counteract the steel teeth," he said, quoted by the Hollywood Reporter in a 2009 interview.
"I guess I overdid it -- I became too likable to kill off!"
On the small screen, Kiel played an alien in The Twilight Zone in 1959 and appeared in horror TV series Kolchak: The Night Stalker in the 1970s.
Born in Detroit, Kiel -- who had worked as a nightclub bouncer and cemetery plot salesman before getting into show business -- also appeared in TV shows including The Man from U.N.C.L.E. and The Wild Wild West.
Other big-screen credits included playing a hitman alongside Gene Wilder and Richard Pryor in the 1976 comedy Silver Streak, as well as The Longest Yard (1974) with Burt Reynolds.
In 1978, he appeared in Force 10 From Navarone and in 1985 worked with Clint Eastwood on Pale Rider.
He also took a turn behind the camera, co-writing and producing the 1991 family movie The Giant of Thunder Mountain, in which he also starred.
He reprised his Jaws character in 1999 action adventure movie Inspector Gadget with Matthew Broderick.
