“Avengers” Star Passes

Actor Gareth Hunt, who starred in The New Avengers (1976-1977) with Patrick Macnee and Joanna Lumley, died of pancreatic cancer on Tuesday. He was 65 years old and, according to his agent, died at home in England. “He fought the disease with great courage and through his strength of character and his wonderful sense of humour, he continued to work right up until the end of 2006,” the agent says.

Hunt was born Alan Leonard Hunt on February 7, 1943, a nephew of the well-known British actress Martita Hunt (1900-1969).

Although Hunt’s role as Mike Gambit on The New Avengers is the one he is most strongly identified with, he was a working actor throughout his life, with many screen, stage, and TV roles to his credit. In the years just prior to those he spent playing Gambit, he was very strongly identified as Frederick Norton, the character he portrayed on the long-running British drama Upstairs, Downstairs.

And look for Hunt later this year in writer-director Brendan Foley’s The Riddle. (Which actually sounds like a pretty rockin’ movie. Here’s what the IMDb says about it: “A journalist investigates a series of murders that follows the discovery of an unpublished novel by Charles Dickens in the cellar of an old Thames-side pub. Gradually, he becomes obsessed with unraveling a century-old murder in the pages of the manuscript. Only when he has done so, with the help of a mysterious beach-combing tramp who stalks the Thames foreshore, is he able to solve the modern murders.”)

The BBC has a lovely remembrance of Gareth Hunt here.