'Body Snatchers' movie star Kevin McCarthy dies

Kevin McCarthy, a veteran Hollywood actor best known as the star of the 1956 sci-fi cult film "Invasion of the Body Snatchers," has died aged 96, the Los Angeles Times reported Sunday.

Over his 70-plus year career on stage and screen McCarthy appeared in some 50 movies and scores of TV shows, as well as theater productions.

He won a Golden Globe award for his role as Biff Loman in the 1951 film version of the Arthur Miller play "Death of a Salesman." Earlier he played Loman in the stage version of the play in London.

McCarthy was born in 1914 in the west coast city of Seattle. He began his acting career in the late 1930s with performances on Broadway, and was one of the founders of the Actor's Studio in New York.

But his biggest hit was as Miles Bennell in "Body Snatchers," in which he portrayed a medical doctor trying to warn residents of a California town that they are being replaced by emotionless alien clones raised in giant seed pods.

The low-budget film, which came at the height of the Cold War, was such a cult classic that the Library of Congress chose it in 1994 for preservation in the National Film Registry.

McCarthy also appeared in movies including "An Annapolis Story," "Buffalo Bill and the Indians," and "Piranhas," as well as TV shows such as "The Twilight Zone" and "Murder, She Wrote."

McCarthy died of natural causes at a hospital in Cape Cod, Massachusetts, the newspaper reported. AFP calls to confirm his death were not immediately returned.

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