Yaphet Kotto, best known for playing a villain in 1973 James Bond movie Live and Let Die, has died at the age of 81. The actor also played a crew member in 1979 sci-fi movie Alien, and starred in US TV police drama Homicide: Life on the Street.

Born Fredrick Kotto in Harlem, New York of Cameroonian royal ancestry (his great -grandfather had been a king in pre-colonial days) and raised in both the Jewish and the Catholic faith at the behest of his parents (his father was a former businessman-turned construction worker who emigrated to America in the 1920's; his mother was a nurse and army officer), he began to study acting at the age of 16.

His father, Njoki Manga Bell, was the great-grandson of King Alexander Bell, who ruled the Douala region of Cameroon in the late 19th century, before the nation fell into the hands of Germany and, later, France and Britain. Fleeing the Germans, Manga Bell immigrated to Harlem in the 1920s and changed his name to Abraham Kotto (the surname is from a relative). ‘Yaphet’ means ‘beautiful’ in Hebrew.

At 19, he made his professional theatre debut in Othello, and later performed on Broadway in The Great White Hope. His first few film projects included Nothing But a Man in 1964 and The Thomas Crown Affair in 1968. He also had an aunt in showbiz who ran a dance academy whose alumni included Marlon Brando and James Dean.

One of the few actors of his generation to succeed in breaking racial stereotypes in Hollywood, he drew plaudits for his role as the first Black Bond villain Dr Kananga - an evil Caribbean diplomat masquerading as a New York drug lord - in Live and Let Die. He then had roles in 1974's Truck Turner and 1978's Blue Collar.  In the film Alien, he played the space ship's engineer Dennis Parker. Following the film's success, he turned down a role in Star Wars sequel The Empire Strikes Back because he was wary of becoming typecast in the sci-fi genre and appeared in the blockbuster 1988 crime/thriller Midnight Run alongside Robert De Niro and Charles Grodin.

His other credits included the action thriller The Running Man, alongside Arnold Schwarzenegger. And he received an Emmy nomination for playing former Ugandan President Idi Amin in the 1977 movie Raid on Entebbe. His TV career included roles in the A-Team and Law and Order, and one of Kotto's longest roles was that of Lieutenant Al Giardello in seven series of Homicide: Life on the Street, for which he also worked as a scriptwriter.

In an interview he said: "I wanted to get back down on Earth. I was afraid that if I did another space film after having done Alien, then I'd be typed. Once you get one of those big blockbuster hits, you better have some other big blockbuster hits to go with it too and be Harrison Ford, because if you don't… you place yourself right out of the business."

He was known for turning down the role of Captain Jean-Luc Picard - made famous by Sir Patrick Stewart in Star Trek: The Next Generation - saying: "I should have done that, but I walked away." He admitted: "When you're making movies, you'd tend to say no to TV. It's like when you're in college and someone asks you to the high school dance. You say no."

Yaphet went on to play a supporting role as Richard Dickie Coombes in Brubaker in 1980, and then appear in The Running Man. His other film credits also included Bill Cosby's Man and Boy (1971), Across 110th Street (1972), Report to the Commissioner (1975), The Star Chamber (1983), Warning Sign (1985), Eye of the Tiger (1986) and Freddy's Dead: The Final Nightmare (1991). His other TV roles included appearances in For Love and Honor, Murder She Wrote and Death Valley Days.

Most recently, he reprised his role as Lieutenant Giardello in Homicide: The Movie in 2000, and voiced his Alien character Parker in the Alien: Isolation video game.

Dying age 81, the three-time married star is survived by six children.