Karl Malden, whose acting career spanned seven decades, has died peacefully at home in Hollywood, at the ripe old age of 97.
Malden was a character actor of the old school; his weathered face and bulbous nose (broken playing basketball and football) instantly recognisable. He worked opposite Marlon Brando three times, in A Streetcar Named Desire, On the Waterfront and the troubled western One Eyed Jacks, and had substantial roles in **Birdman of Alcatraz **and Patton.
He won the Best Supporting Actor Oscar for Streetcar, and was nominated for On the Waterfront. He was given the Screen Actor's Guild's Lifetime Achievement Award in 1993 and was a past president of The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
Movie audiences hadn't seen him since the 1987 Barbra Streisand vehicle Nuts, but he was lured out of retirement occasionally, appearing in **The West Wing **in 2000, and in a TV movie return to his Emmy-winning role in 70s cop show The Streets of San Francisco in 1992.
He once said, "People have told me that I came to this industry at its Golden Age. But when I was there, it was just an age."