The veteran television and film actor Lloyd Bochner, who has died aged 81, played mostly suave villains and heroes for more than five decades, but one of his best-known appearances came in a 1962 episode of the Twilight Zone.
In the episode of the sci-fi series entitled To Serve Man, Bochner played a government cryptographer, Michael Chambers, assigned to decipher the contents of an enigmatic book left behind by an alien. The aliens help mankind, and humans depart daily to their planet on spaceships. Chambers decides to visit, having abandoned the translation task. Before stepping aboard he is weighed, as are all passengers, when suddenly his assistant appears with devastating news of the aliens' culinary preferences: "It's a cook book!" But it's too late. Chambers is hustled inside.
The scene acquired almost a cult following over the decades, and was voted 11th in a TV Guide poll of the 100 best television episodes ever.
Bochner's next best-known role was in Dynasty. He appeared only in 1981-2 as scheming tycoon Cecil Colby, rival to Blake Carrington, who dies of a heart attack while making love to his tempestuous screen wife, played by Joan Collins.
It was on stage that Bochner first attracted attention in Canada, where he won two Liberty awards, the nation's highest acting honour. He was born into a middle-class Canadian Jewish family in Toronto, and as a young boy began acting in radio plays. During the war, he served with the Canadian navy before entering Toronto University, where he obtained a degree in sociology.
Bochner appeared at the Stratford Shakespearean Festival in Ontario for six seasons, once playing Duke Vincentio in Measure for Measure, opposite James Mason. In 1951 he moved to New York and made his mark the following year playing a British army officer in the NBC serial drama, One Man's Family.
Bochner went to Hollywood in 1960 and obtained good television parts, usually as a supporting actor. He was in the adventure series Hong Kong as the island's police chief with Rod Taylor as the journalist hero, and turned up in other popular classics such as Dr Kildare, Perry Mason, The Man From Uncle, Mission: Impossible, Columbo, Murder, She Wrote, and Battlestar Galactica. He made regular appearances in NBC's Richard Boone Show.
His films provided useful parts but no big starring role. Among them were: The Night Walker (1964) with Barbara Stanwyck, Tony Rome (1967) and The Detective (1968), both with Frank Sinatra; Point Blank (1967), with Lee Marvin, The Man in the Glass Booth (1975) and the comedy The Naked Gun 2½; The Smell of Fear (1991), in which he parodied his Twilight Zone "cook book" scene. His last film was The Commission (2003).
His wife, Ruth, survives him, as do his two sons and a daughter.
· Lloyd Wolfe Bochner, actor, born July 29 1924; died October 29 2005