Terence Alexander played the smoothest type of English villain in films and on stage for many years but it took a northern millionaire scrap dealer called Charlie Hungerford to make him a star. The handsome, silver-haired Alexander became an instant television favourite as the wealthy tax exile in the Jersey-based crime series Bergerac when it was first broadcast in 1981.

The show, which featured John Nettles as Detective Sergeant Jim Bergerac, ran for a decade, was aired in 35 countries, and Alexander didn’t miss an episode — it was in his contract. He was a hit with the ladies both on and off the stage and screen, but while Nettles’s fan letters came from the younger element, Alexander’s weekly postbag contained adoring sentiments from women of a certain age. “I was the OAPs’ pin-up,” he would say with self-mocking charm.

Hungerford also proved to be the most lucrative role in his financially fluctuating career, long supported by an obliging bank manager and a more-or-less permanent overdraft. “Until Bergerac came along I had lived my entire life in the red,” he once cheerfully confessed. Ironically, he came close to turning down his opportunity of stardom. He was convinced that viewers, who previously knew him only in high-polished, cravat-wearing roles, notably Monty Dartie in the 1960s success The Forsyte Saga, would not accept him as a self-made, wealthy scrap merchant. “Actually, I was a bit miffed being asked to play a grandfather at 58,” he recalled.

However, they wanted “someone healthy to play Charlie” and one of the producers spotted Alexander in the street near his home in Fulham, West London. He thought, mistakenly, that the actor was wearing a jogging suit and cast him in his mind there and then. “In fact I’ve never jogged in my life,” said Alexander. He gave in, gave Charlie Hungerford a convincing Yorkshire accent — no problem as he was largely brought up in Leeds — and created his most memorable character.

Terence Joseph Alexander, the son of Joseph and Violet Alexander, was born in 1923 in London and educated at Ratcliffe College, Leicester. His parents became Master and Matron of Knaresborough Hospital in the West Riding of Yorkshire, once the workhouse. After dropping plans to become a priest, his first of many stage appearances was in December 1939 at the Opera House, Harrogate, playing a young journalist in J. B. Priestley’s The Good Companions. At 18 he was called up for the Army and served in the Second World War with the 27th Lancers in Italy where he was badly wounded after his armoured car was hit in an enemy attack.

One eardrum was damaged leaving him with a “permanent whistle in my ear” and as late as the mid-1970s he developed a limp and had to have surgery to remove shrapnel from his leg. He left the Army at the end of the war with a 50 per cent disability pension.

He returned to the stage, working in repertory theatre where he met his first wife, the actress Juno Stevas, the sister of Norman St John-Stevas (now Lord St John of Fawsley), and the mother of his two sons. They later went into Worthing Rep together where she frequently found herself cast as her husband’s long-suffering mother. The marriage was dissolved after 23 years and Alexander was married to another actress, Jane Downs, the former wife of the actor Gerald Harper. They first met in 1973 when appearing together in the play Two and Two Make Sex at the Cambridge Theatre in the West End.

Alexander’s postwar London stage appearances were numerous. He honed a talent for playing characters that — like his later film and television roles — ranged from the charmingly ineffectual to the silkily villainous. His first was in 1950 in Party Manners at the Prince’s Theatre. Others included Paul in Mrs Willie, at the Globe (1955); Donald Gray in Ring for Catty at the Lyric (1956); Commander Rogers in Joie de Vivre at the Queen’s (1960); Brassac in Poor Bitos, at the Duke of York’s (1964); The Man in In at the Death, at the Phoenix (1967); Henry Lodge in Move Over Mrs Markham, at the Vaudeville (1971); Bill Shorter in There Goes the Bride at the Criterion, later the Ambassadors (1974-75). Oddly enough, although he was a highly skilled stage performer he grew to dislike and even fear live performances.

Later in his career he avoided the stage and once said he would rather starve than go back to it. Part of the problem was a severe loss of vision when he contracted retinitis pigmentosa, a disease of the eyes. He found that the powerful stage lights made him suffer from dizziness and brought on sickening headaches, leaving him tense and fearful. However, he once said that as a young actor, working in the theatre even with unimpaired vision “made me a gibbering wreck. Even watching friends up there makes me nervous”.

It was logical that he should turn to films, television and radio for work.

Perhaps his best-known film was an intriguingly well mannered thriller, The League of Gentlemen (1960), in which he played one of a number of ex-Service misfits short on funds who take part in a military-style bank robbery. His co-thieves included such stars of the period as Jack Hawkins, Richard Attenborough, Nigel Patrick and Roger Livesey. Among his many other films were Waterloo (1970), The Magic Christian (1970) and The Day of the Jackal (1973).

His lazily cultured tones were often in demand on radio too, in such programmes as The Toff and Law and Disorder. He proved to be an often sardonic foil to leading television comedians of the day; supplying dramatic infilling to the sketches of Les Dawson and Dick Emery; and also character cameos in the Terry and June, and Just Liz comedies. He also did voiceovers for many television commercials.

The Forsyte Saga, a 26-part adaptation of the John Galsworthy novels first shown on BBC television in 1967, and with hindsight considered one of the finest TV dramatisations of its kind, gave Alexander one of his juiciest roles in the character of Monty.

He lived like many of the characters he played. He liked the good life; he entertained his friends to elegant, cosy dinner parties; he was a keen golfer; and he was a lover of good wines.

Alexander was basically shy, although his charm concealed a fiery temper if things didn’t go right. He admired women enormously, preferring their company to men.

“I was going to be a priest until I was 14. Then I realised that celibacy wasn’t for me,” he once said. He never forgot his good fortune in landing his prize role in Bergerac. He was to say more than once: “Over the years I’ve done a lot of rubbish, but I’ve always kept working. And Charlie is the best part I have ever had.”

Latterly Alexander suffered from Parkinson’s disease. He is survived by his wife Jane and by his two sons from his first marriage.

Terence Alexander, actor, was born on March 11, 1923. He died on May 28, 2009, aged 86