Bernard Fox died at Valley Presbyterian Hospital in Van Nuys, Calif., of heart failure, the actor’s publicist told The Hollywood Reporter. Fox was best known for playing Dr. Bombay, a womanizing warlock, on “Bewitched” from 1966 to 1972. He also famously appeared as Captain Winston Havlock in the 1999 flick “The Mummy” and in “Titanic” as Col. Archibald Gracie.
“Dr. Bombay was an outrageous character,” Fox told a Bewitched fan site in 1998. “If I’d just gone for an ordinary doctor, you wouldn’t have heard any more about it. But because I made him such a colorful character, that’s why they wanted him back; he was easy to write for. They came up with the idea of him coming from different parts of the world all the time, and in different costumes; that was their idea. The puns, I came up with, and in those days, they let you do that.”
Born in Wales in 1927, Fox was the child of two stage actors and nephew to The Long Voyage Home star Wilfrid Lawson. He joined the family business at a young age and was an assistant manager of a theater by the time he was 14, but his career was put on hold when he enlisted in the Royal Navy during World War II.
After the war, he returned to acting, getting his first television credits in 1955 on the British series Sixpenny Corner. Over the next decade, Fox made frequent appearances in British films and on television before scoring guest-starring roles on some of the most iconic American TV shows of the time, including The Dick Van Dyke Show, Perry Mason, The Andy Griffith Show, and I Dream of Jeannie.
The actor is survived by his wife of more than 50 years, Jacqueline, daughter Amanda, daughter-in-law Lisa Wilke, and two grandchildren.