David Warner of The Omen and Titanic fame passes away at 80

Veteran British actor David Warner, who gave memorable performances on screen in films like Titanic, Tron and The Omen among several others, has died. He was 80.

Los Angeles (US): Emmy-winning English actor David Warner, who gave memorable performances on the big screen, in a key role in the seminal 1976 horror film, The Omen, and as villains in Time After Time, Time Bandits and Tron, has died of cancer-related illness. He was 80.

The actor's family said in a statement: "Over the past 18 months he approached his diagnosis with a characteristic grace and dignity." The statement of the family added: "He will be missed hugely by us, his family and friends, and remembered as a kind-hearted, generous and compassionate man, partner and father, whose legacy of extraordinary work has touched the lives of so many over the years. We are heartbroken."

Warner was Emmy-nominated for playing Reinhard Heydrich, a Nazi official who was a key architect of the Final Solution, in the landmark 1978 miniseries Holocaust, and won an Emmy for playing the sadistic Roman political opportunist Pomponius Falco in the 1981 miniseries Masada. He reprised the role of the Nazi Heydrich in the 1985 telepic Hitler's S.S.: Portrait in Evil.

The actor was among the large cast of James Cameron's 1997 epic Titanic, but was wasted "in the role of a thug-like butler". He played a simian senator in Tim Roth's 2001 reimagining of Planet of the Apes and a doctor in the hit comedy Ladies in Lavender (2005) starring the inimitable duo of Judi Dench and Maggie Smith.

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Recently, Warner appeared in Disney's Mary Poppins Returns in (2018) and You, Me and Him (2017) and on Showtime's Penny Dreadful as the Dracula character Professor Abraham van Helsing in 2014.

The mid-'70s to the mid-'80s probably represented the zenith of Warner's career, starting with The Omen, where he played Jennings, the photographer who develops images on which the specific manner of death for the individuals depicted is superimposed. (With agency inputs)