Lost In Space actor dies

The 60s series was set in outer space

Jonathan Harris, the actor behind the cowardly sci-fi villain Dr Zachary Smith in the TV series Lost In Space, has died at the age of 87.

Harris died on Sunday in Encino, California from a blood clot to the heart after receiving treatment for a chronic back problem.

Harris, who carved a niche as an animation voice artist after finding fame in the 1960s TV series, was born Jonathan Charasuchin in the Bronx, New York, in 1914.

He was the son of Jewish-Russian immigrants and changed his name and adopted a stage manner of affected upper-class Englishness, with a haughty accent and painstaking enunciation.

Gary Oldman played Dr Smith in the big-screen Lost in Space

When asked if he was from England, the actor would often reply: "No, just affected", a family spokesman, Kevin Burns, told reporters.

He became an actor in 1942, after training to become a pharmacist, and during World War II acted in review shows for troops in the Pacific.

After the war he returned to New York and made a name as a stage and TV actor, getting his first big role in the 1950s series The Third Man.

But it was his role as the ranting, megalomaniac saboteur Dr Zachary Smith in Lost In Space that turned him into a star.

In the series, Smith's cowardly villain sabotages the spaceship of the Robinson family - but is trapped with them when the rocket veers into unknown space.

Animation

The series, which was a pastiche of Swiss Family Robinson, was one of the biggest hits in 1960s US TV.

He acted in several other sci-fi series, including The Land Of Giants and Battlestar Galactica, before switching over to voice work in 1982.

In recent years he played the voices of the insect ringleader in Pixar's A Bug's Life, and the mysterious Cleaner in Toy Story 2.

A Hollywood remake of Lost in Space, starring Friends actor Matt LeBlanc, came out in 1998. The part of Dr Smith was played by Gary Oldman.