Gregory Peck, yesteryear Hollywood star who won a best actor Oscar for his portrayal of upright lawyer Atticus Finch in the 1962 film To Kill a Mockingbird has died, CNN reported today. He was 87.

Peck died overnight, his spokesman said.

Finch was recently named the #1 hero in movie history, according to a survey by the American Film Institute.

Peck was known for roles of dignified statesmen and people with a strong code of ethics: a reporter confronting anti-Semitism in Gentleman's Agreement (1947, a best picture Oscar winner, with Dorothy McGuire, John Garfield), a military officer in The Guns of Navarone (1961, Anthony Quinn, David Niven, Irene Papas), and president of the United States in Amazing Grace and Chuck (1987, Dean Alexander, Jamie Lee Curtis).

But he could also play against type. He portrayed a conflicted father in the original Cape Fear (1962, Robert Mitchum) directed by J Lee Thompson and the Nazi Dr Josef Mengele in The Boys from Brazil (1978, Sir Laurence Olivier, James Mason).

He also gave an air of wondrous bemusement to his reporter in Audrey Hepburn's first major film, Roman Holiday (1953), for which Hepburn won an Oscar.

Born on April 5, 1916, in La Jolla, California, Eldred Gregory Peck, the only child of a San Diego druggist, became one of the biggest stars in Hollywood from the 1940s through the 1960s. His parents divorced when Peck was just five and he was sent to live with his grandmother.

He later recounted that his fondest memories of childhood were of going to the movies -- it was the silent era then and movies were just coming into their own -- with his grandmother and of his dog, which followed him everywhere.

While at Berkeley studying medicine, Peck was bitten by the acting bug. He left Berkeley and joined the Neighbourhood Playhouse in New York to study the art. After graduation, he made his Broadway debut in the 1942 play The Morning Star.

A year later, he was in Hollywood, where he made his debut in the RKO film Days of Glory (Tamara Toumanova, Alan Reed). His next film, The Keys of the Kingdom (1944, Thomas Mitchell, Vincent Price) made the 6'3" actor a star and brought Peck his first Academy Award nomination. He became famous for his rugged screen presence, with a basic decency that transcended his roles.

Among his other well-known films were Alfred Hitchcock's Spellbound (1945, Ingrid Bergman), The Yearling (1946, Jane Wyman), The Gunfighter (1950, Helen Westcott), The Snows of Kilimanjaro (1952, Susan Hayward, Ava Gardner), The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit (1956, Jennifer Jones, Lee J Cobb), Moby Dick (1956, Richard Basehart), The Big Country (1958, Jean Simmons, Carroll Baker, Charlton Heston), How the West Was Won (1962, Carroll Baker, Lee J Cobb, Henry Fonda, James Stewart, John Wayne, Richard Widmark), Mackenna's Gold (1969, Omar Sharif, Telly Savalas), The Omen (1976, Lee Remick) and MacArthur (1977, Dan O'Herlihy, Ed Flanders, Ward Costello, Ivan Bonar).