Simon MacCorkindale, the dashing British actor who turned heads in the star-studded 1978 film “Death on the Nile” and went on to play villains and charming Englishmen on numerous television shows in Britain and the United States, died Thursday in London. He was 58.

The cause was cancer, the BBC reported.

With a dramatic brow, boyish good looks, slick hair combed to one side and an upper-crust British dialect, MacCorkindale found early success on the London stage after roles in college and regional productions. He made his West End debut in 1974 in a production of “Pygmalion” that starred Diana Rigg and Alec McCowen.

But his big break came at age 25 when he was cast in “Death on the Nile,” a big-budget screen adaptation of Agatha Christie’s novel, in which he played the trophy husband of the heiress, played by Lois Chiles, who is murdered aboard a Nile River cruiser. His co-stars included Peter Ustinov, Maggie Smith and Bette Davis.

He later had a recurring role as the conniving lawyer to Jane Wyman’s equally conniving Angela Channing in the prime-time CBS soap opera “Falcon Crest.”