DHAKA: James Garner, the US star of hit TV series The Rockford Files and Maverick and films including The Great Escape, has died aged 86.

Garner had suffered ill health since a severe stroke in 2008.

‘Mr Garner died of natural causes,’ the West LA Division of the Los Angeles Police Department told the BBC, adding they had two officers at the scene.

His body has been released to his family by a doctor, the police spokesman said.

Garner’s greatest successes were as laconic private investigator Jim Rockford (1974 to 1980) and also as the poker-playing Bret Maverick in the Western comedy from 1957 to 1962, and again from 1981 to 1982.

The actor was also Oscar-nominated for best actor in 1986 for the romantic comedy ‘Murphy’s Romance’, in which he played a small town pharmacist.

He starred alongside ‘Doris Day’ in the 1963 screwball comedy Move over Darling and with Julie Andrews in gender-bending comedy Victor Victoria in 1982.

He won an Emmy in 1977 for The Rockford Files and was given a Screen Actor’s Guild lifetime achievement award in 2005.

In 1963’s iconic World War Two film ‘The Great Escape’, Garner played flight lieutenant Robert Hendley, an American in the RAF, alongside Steve McQueen, Richard Attenborough and Donald Pleasence.

BDST: 1921 HRS, JUL 20, 2014