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Hollywood actor best known for his starring role as Lieutenant Dan 'Hondo' Harrelson in the 70s cop series S.W.A.T.

Steve Forrest, who has died aged 87, was a product of the Hollywood studio system, then at its tail end in the 1950s. Although MGM had the handsome, rugged 6ft 3in actor under contract for five years, from 1952 to 1957, they gave him few chances to shine. It was only when he left the studio that Forrest got bigger and better parts in feature films – one of his best performances was as the white brother of Elvis Presley, who plays the son of a Native American mother and a Texas rancher father, in Don Siegel's excellent western Flaming Star (1960) – and he was able to start a long and busy career on television.

In fact, it was on the small screen that Forrest would build his fame, notably in S.W.A.T. (1975-...

A spirited damsel in distress and a familiar face in postwar Hollywood films

Although the actor Patricia Medina, who has died aged 92, had a cut-glass English accent, her voluptuous Latin looks often prevented her from playing English characters. As her name suggests, she was half-Spanish, born in Liverpool, the daughter of a Spanish father – a lawyer and former opera singer – and an English mother.

Medina, who appeared in more than 50 feature films, many of them costume dramas, was seldom called upon to display much acting ability, though she was an unusually spirited damsel in distress. However, she used the one chance she had to work with a director of magnitude, Orson Welles, in Mr Arkadin (also known as Confidential Report, 1955), to show what she was capable of. As Mily, in this breathless, globetrotting film, she is an earthy nightclub dancer who attempts to seduce the amnesiac billionaire Welles. It was...

Actress Patricia Medina has died after a long battle with ill health at the age of 92.

She died at Barlow Respiratory Hospital on Saturday, according to the Associated Press.

The British-born beauty began her acting career in England in the late 1930s and moved to Hollywood after marrying The Adventures of Robin Hood TV star Richard Greene.

Medina became a big star following leading roles opposite Fernando Lamas in Sangaree, Glenn Ford in Plunder of the Sun and Alan Ladd in Botany Bay.

Her additional film credits include Mr. Arkadin, Abbott and Costello in the Foreign Legion, Phantom of the Rue Morgue, Fortunes of Captain Blood, Lady in the Iron Mask, and The Lady and the Bandit.

In 1960, the actress married Citizen Kane star Joseph Cotten and two years later she made her Broadway debut opposite her new husband in Calculated Risk.

Los Angeles — The actress who became a leading lady of Hollywood films in the 1950s opposite Glenn Ford, Alan Ladd, Karl Malden and Fernando Lamas has died in Los Angeles. Patricia Medina was 92.

Her friend, Meredith Silverbach, told the Los Angeles Times () that Medina had been in declining health and that she died Saturday at Barlow Respiratory Hospital. http://lat.ms/K1ouks

The British-born actress was the widow of actor Joseph Cotten. She arrived in Hollywood after World War II and signed with the MGM studios.

She had lead roles in "Abbott and Costello in the Foreign Legion" in 1950, "Sangaree" with Lamas in 1953, "Plunder of the Sun" with Ford in 1953, "Botany Bay" with Ladd in 1953 and "Phantom of the Rue Morgue" with Malden in 1954.

Medina wrote an autobiography, "Laid Back in Hollywood," in 1998.

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Information from: Los Angeles Times, http://www.latimes.com...

Friend, killer, lover, specimen ...

The guinea pig

Cinema persistently tries to achieve what science so far has not: make a man/monkey mashup. In The Doctor's Experiment; or Reversing Darwin's Theory (1908) men are turned into apes, while in Balaoo the Demon Baboon (1913, twice remade) a doctor has a go at the reverse, with the side-effect of turning them murderous. In 1932's Murders in the Rue Morgue, women are injected with ape blood (they die); in Return of the Ape Man (1944) Bela Lugosi swaps John Carradine's brain with that of a gorilla (again, doesn't go well). The Man Without a Body (1957) tells of an impressionable gent who submits to the ministrations of a scientist who has been seeing what happens when you play switcheroo with monkey heads.

The erotic cipher

King Kong resonates because, much as Kong repels us, we empathise too: who hasn't been rejected by the object of...

The Los Angeles Times has reported that Acting legend and Academy Award Winner Karl Malden has died.

While the versatile actor was most famous for his starring turn in The Streets Of San Francisco and as the man who made "Don't leave home without it" a catch phrase for American Express, he was no stranger to the horror and thriller genres, having appeared in Dario Argento's Il gatto a nove code (1971) aka Cat O' Nine Tails, Alfred Hitchcock's I Confess! (1953), and Roy Del Ruth's 1954 film Phantom Of The Rue Morgue among others.

Born in 1912 in Chicago, Illinois, and raised in Gary, Indiana  (birthplace of the recently-deceased Michael Jackson), Malden studied acting at Chicago's Goodman Theatre before moving to New York, where he made his stage debut in 1937. He picked up an Oscar in 1951 for his role in A Streetcar Named Desire, one of many accolades received during his long career.