Bond no longer has a nemesis to fear

LONDON - Charles Gray, the English actor best known for his portrayal of the cat-loving but otherwise villainous Ernst Stavro Blofeld in the James Bond film Diamonds Are Forever, died on Tuesday, his agent said yesterday.

Gray, who was 71, specialised in smooth, unsympathetic roles and played the bald, scarred Blofeld to perfection.

Blofeld was the head of Spectre, a shadowy private organisation which specialised in holding the world to ransom with weapons of mass destruction and devising increasingly more intricate ways of trying to kill the English secret agent.

Gray, who died in hospital, also played the urbane narrator in The Rocky Horror Picture Show, and starred in The Mirror Crack'd, an Agatha Christie adaptation, and the wartime drama Night of the Generals.

He also gained a curious kind of fame when he was called on to provide a voice for actor Jack Hawkins, who had his larynx removed in an operation for throat cancer.