Rod Taylor, star of 'The Birds,' dies at 84

Rod Taylor, the star of Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds, has died. He was 84.

The news was first reported by People, which cited the Australian actor’s rep. According to The Hollywood Reporter, his daughter Felicia, a former CNN correspondent, also confirmed the news with CNN.

Taylor died Thursday at his home in Los Angeles from natural causes.

Taylor was born in Sydney on Jan. 11, 1930 and had been acting in films as early as 1951, making appearances in George Stevens’ Giant, Separate Tables and on TV in Twilight Zone and Playhouse 90. In 1960, he scored his Hollywood breakthrough in the adaptation of H.G. Welles’ The Time Machine. The next year, Disney picked him to voice Pongo in the animated hit 101 Dalmatians.

In 1963, he scored his most well-remembered role in Hitchcock’s iconic horror movie The Birds, starring alongside Tippi Hedren. He also made The V.I.P.s with Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton and Sunday in New York with Jane Fonda that year. In 1964, he worked with James Garner in 36 Hours.

Taylor continued acting on television and in movies steadily through the late 1990s, including parts on Walker, Texas Ranger, Murder She Wrote and Falcon Crest.

In 2009, Quentin Tarantino called him up to play Sir Winston Churchill in the World War II romp Inglorious Basterds.

"My dad loved his work. Being an actor was his passion – calling it an honorable art and something he couldn’t live without," Felicia said in a statement to People. “He once said, 'I am a poor student sitting at the feet of giants, yearning for their wisdom and begging for lessons that might one day make me a complete artist," she continued, " 'so that if all goes well, I may one day sit beside them.'”

Taylor is survived by his wife Carol and their daughter, Felicia.

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