Richard Widmark, who made a sensational film debut as the giggling killer in Kiss of Death and became a Hollywood leading man in Broken Lance, Two Rode Together and 40 other films, has died after a long illness at the age of 93.

Widmark's wife, Susan Blanchard, says the actor died at his home in Roxbury on Monday. She would not provide details of his illness and said funeral arrangements are private.

"It was a big shock, but he was 93," Blanchard said.

After a career in radio drama and theatre, Widmark moved to films as Tommy Udo, who delighted in pushing an old lady in a wheelchair to her death down a flight of stairs in the 1947 thriller Kiss of Death. The performance won him an Academy Award nomination as supporting actor; it was his only mention for an Oscar.

"That damned laugh of mine!" he told a reporter in 1961. "For two years after that picture, you couldn't get me to smile. I played the part the way I did because the script struck me as funny and the part I played made me laugh. The guy was such a ridiculous beast."

A quiet, inordinately shy man, Widmark often portrayed killers, cops and Western gunslingers. But he said he hated guns.

"I know I've made kind of a half-assed career out of violence, but I abhor violence," he remarked in a 1976 Associated Press interview. "I am an ardent supporter of gun control. It seems incredible to me that we are the only civilised nation that does not put some effective control on guns."

Two years out of college, Widmark reached New York in 1938 during the heyday of radio. His mellow Midwest voice made him a favourite in soap operas, and he found himself racing from studio to studio.

Rejected by the Army because of a punctured eardrum, Widmark began appearing in theatre productions in 1943. His first was a comedy hit on Broadway, Kiss and Tell. He was appearing in the Chicago company of Dream Girl with June Havoc when 20th Century Fox signed him to a seven-year contract. He almost missed out on the Kiss of Death role.

"The director, Henry Hathaway, didn't want me," the actor recalled. "I have a high forehead; he thought I looked too intellectual." The director was overruled by studio boss Darryl F Zanuck, and Hathaway "gave me kind of a bad time".

An immediate star, Widmark appeared in 20 Fox films from 1957 to 1964. Among them: The Street With No Name, Road House, Yellow Sky, Down to the Sea in Ships, Slattery's Hurricane, Panic in the Streets, No Way Out, The Halls of Montezuma, The Frogmen, Red Skies of Montana, My Pal Gus and the Samuel Fuller film noir Pickup on South Street.

After leaving Fox, Widmark's career continued to flourish. He starred (as Jim Bowie) with John Wayne in The Alamo, with James Stewart in John Ford's Two Rode Together, as the US prosecutor in Judgment at Nuremberg, and with Robert Mitchum and Kirk Douglas in The Way West. He also played the Dauphin in St Joan, and had roles in How the West Was Won, Death of a Gunfighter, Murder on the Orient Express, Midas Run and Coma.

In later years, Widmark appeared sparingly in films and TV. He explained to Parade magazine in 1987: "I've discovered in my dotage that I now find the whole moviemaking process irritating. I don't have the patience anymore. I've got a few more years to live, and I don't want to spend them sitting around a movie set for 12 hours to do two minutes of film."