Biography

William Sylvester (January 31, 1922 – January 25, 1995) was an American TV and film actor. His most famous film credit was Dr. Heywood Floyd in Stanley Kubrick's 2001 A Space Odyssey (1968). Born in Oakland, California and married at one time to the British actress Veronica Hurst, he moved to England after the Second World War and became a staple of British B films at a time when American and Canadian actors were much in demand in order to give indigenous films some appeal in the US. As a result, he gained top billing in one of his very first films, House of Blackmail (1953), directed by the veteran filmmaker Maurice Elvey, for whom he also made What Every Woman Wants the following year.