Oscar-winning US actor Cliff Robertson died yesterday, one day after his 88th birthday.
His secretary announced that he died in New York state of natural causes, according to the BBC.
Robertson was born in LA in 1923. He started acting as early as 1943, and rose to prominence with his performance as future president John F Kennedy in 1963's PT 109 , a drama about the young man's wartime experiences.
He was apparently JFK's first choice to play his younger self.
It was the 1968 film Charly , an adaptation of Flowers For Algernon , that won Robertson the Academy Award for Best Actor.
From 1977 to 1983, Robertson found himself blacklisted in Hollywood after blowing the whistle on an embezzlement scam.
Among his other notable movies were Three Days In The Condor , Brian De Palma's Obsession , and J.W. Coop (which he wrote and directed as well as starring in).
He will, of course, probably be best remembered by the current generation of cinemagoers as Peter Parker's wise Uncle Ben in Sam Raimi's Spider-Man .
He went on to appear (in flashback form) in Spideys 2 and 3 .
Our thoughts go out to his family and friends.
