The Guardian's film critic Derek Malcolm: "His career was in two halves"

In his fifties he moved to Provence, where he bought a farmhouse, and began a second career as a novelist, penning several novels and a series of autobiographical works.

His last book, For The Time Being, was published last year.

Derek Niven Van den Bogaerde was born on 28 March, 1921, son of the picture editor of The Times newspaper.

He was brought up in a bohemian household in north London but in his teens, with war looming, was sent to live with relatives in Scotland.

When war did come Bogarde enlisted in the Queen's Royal Regiment, and rose to the rank of captain.

Witnessed Belsen horrors

In 1945 he drove through the Belsen concentration camp the day after it had been liberated.

He later said nothing would ever frighten or disturb him as much again.

His career was in two halves. He made his screen debut, with his newly anglicised name, in 1948 and the following year appeared as a young, frightened killer in The Blue Lamp.

Bogarde starring opposite Brigitte Bardot in Doctor At Sea

In the 1950s British cinema bosses picked him out as a star of the future, and he became a matinée idol, what one critic called the "Leonardo Di Caprio of his day".

Such was his status it was said that he occasionally had to sew up his flies to fend off female admirers.

But, like Rock Hudson a decade later in Hollywood, Bogarde's private sexuality was at odds with his on-screen persona.

Joe Losey...saw Bogarde's potential as a serious actor

In 1960 Bogarde's career was turned around when the director Joe Losey chose him to star in The Victim, the first of a series of serious roles which were to end his matinée idol status.

Iconoclastic role

He effectively "came out" on screen, playing the part of a married, homosexual barrister who becomes the victim of a blackmail plot.

Bogarde won the British Academy's prestigious Best Actor Award for his performance, opposite James Fox, in the title role in Losey's version of Harold Pinter's play The Servant.

In 1973 he gave what he considered his best ever performance in Luchino Visconti's adaptation of Death in Venice.

Bogarde excelled as a dying composer enchanted by a handsome teenage boy.

One of his last roles, in These Wishful Things

His last film was These Foolish Things, in which he starred as a British expatriot living in France and coming to terms with life as he faces death.

Sexually ambiguous

Bogarde's sexuality was a matter for speculation throughout his life.

Although he documented his early sexual encounters with girls, and later his adoring love for Kay Kendall and Judy Garland, he never wrote about his relationship with his companion and manager for more than 50 years, Tony Forwood.

He moved back to the UK in 1986 due to his partner's ill health and was knighted in 1992.

He suffered a stroke in September 1996 and spent his final years under 24-hour care.