Geoffrey Holder, best known as Bond villain Baron Samedi, dies aged 84

Actor Geoffrey Holder has died aged 84. His most famous role came as James Bond’s voodoo-practising nemesis Baron Samedi in Live and Let Die (1973), the first Bond film to star Roger Moore.

Holder was born in Port of Spain in Trinidad and Tobago in 1930. Also a Broadway dancer and choreographer, he won two Tony awards for costume design and musical direction for the original stage version of The Wiz, an all-black version of The Wizard of Oz that was later made into a film by Sidney Lumet.

On-screen, he had other notable roles in Doctor Dolittle (1967), “Everything You Always Wanted to Know about Sex”* *But Were Afraid to Ask (1972) and Annie (1981). His death comes less than a month after Richard Kiel’s, another actor who, as Jaws, reached his widest audience as one of the great Bond villains of the Roger Moore era.