The Avengers star Patrick Macnee dies, aged 93

Patrick Macnee - star of iconic 1960s spy series The Avengers - has died, aged 93.



A statement posted on the English actor's official website announced that he passed away at his family home.

The statement read: "Daniel Patrick Macnee died a natural death at his home in Rancho Mirage, California, at age 93, with his family at his bedside, according to his son, Rupert."

Macnee is best known for playing the quintessential secret agent John Steed in the beloved television series The Avengers from 1961 through 1969.

His partnerships with Honor Blackman and Dame Diana Rigg made The Avengers an international phenomenon in the '60s.

The Avengers lasted for six series in its original run, with Macnee later pairing with Joanna Lumley and Gareth Hunt for a revamped New Avengers in the late 1970s.

Aside from the iconic spy series, he also played Arthur Conan Doyle's Doctor Watson opposite the recently-deceased Sir Christopher Lee in two Sherlock Holmes films.

Other memorable roles included a send-up of his Avengers fame in Sir Roger Moore's Bond classic A View to a Kill, voicing the Imperious Leader in the original Battlestar Galactica series, and replacing Leo G Carroll in The Return of the Man from UNCLE The Fifteen-Years-Later Affair.

Macnee lived the last 40 years of his life in California's Coachella Valley community.

The quintessential English gentleman.

R.I.P.