Farley Granger, who found quick stardom in films like Alfred Hitchcock’s “Strangers on a Train” in the 1940s and ’50s but who then turned aside from Hollywood to pursue stage and television roles, died Sunday at his home in New York. He was 85.

A spokeswoman for the New York City medical examiner’s office said he died of natural causes.

Granger’s youthful good looks gave him matinee-idol potential, and he was linked romantically to some of the biggest names of the day, of both sexes. But his passion for stage acting and his discontent with the studio system kept him from reaching the Hollywood stardom of some of his contemporaries.

Although he had scores of television and film credits and made a half-dozen Broadway appearances, his best-known performances were two of his earliest: as a preppie thrill-killer in Hitchcock’s “Rope” in 1948 and as a tennis player wrongly suspected of murder in “Strangers on a Train” in 1951.