Patrick McGoohan

Two-time Emmy-award winning actor Patrick McGoohan, the star of TV hits Secret Agent and The Prisoner, has died. He was 80, and passed away in Santa Monica, Calif. after a brief illness, his family told the L.A. Times.

McGoohan was born in New York to Irish parents who returned to Ireland when he was several months old, and later settled in England.

His rise to fame in American pop culture began in 1961, when he starred as John Drake in CBS' British-produced Danger Man. In 1965, he reprised the role in Private Agent, an expansion of the show about a spy working for the English government.