Cult actor Edward Woodward dies, aged 79
The British actor Edward Woodward, who started his career treading the boards in Shakespearean rep but went on to become an iconic television hard man, has died at the age of 79.
Woodward found fame in the late 1960s with the TV spy series Callan, in which he played a reluctant professional hitman.
His greatest commercial success came almost two decades later in the American series The Equalizer in which he played Robert McCall, a former secret service agent turned urban vigilante.
In 1973 Woodward earned a place in cinematic history with a starring role in the horror movie The Wicker Man, in which he played a devoutly Christian police sergeant called to investigate the disappearance of a young girl from a sinister paganist community on a remote Scottish island.