Photo: ITV/Rex Features
Woodward was that rarity in the entertainment world: one who specialised in nothing much, yet appeared to be especially talented in whatever he took on: villains, heroes, characters from melodrama and the musical comedy stage – all were tackled with a superb professionalism.
To his portrayal of the cynical secret service agent Callan, he brought an authentic seediness; while his majestic portrayal of the avenging Robert McCall, the upright figure in the long overcoat in The Equalizer, turned him into an unlikely cult figure in the United States.
Supposed to be television's answer to James Bond on the big screen, Callan was broadcast by ITV from 1967 to 1972. Woodward's eponymous hero cut a lonely and unglamorous figure. While Bond moved in a world of gadgetry, fantasy and sex, Callan's universe was that of an outsider whose life as a professional killer was solitary and bleak.
In 1970 Woodward won a Bafta award for best actor for his role in Callan. But he became so closely identified with the part that when the series ended after six years, he had a job to find work in the theatre. In 1974 he starred in a feature film about Callan.
The Equalizer was shown on ITV from 1986 to 1989, with Woodward as a former secret service agent for "The Company" (the CIA) who had turned to working as a private investigator. He dressed immaculately, drove a Jaguar and carried a gun; unusually in this genre, the hero was on the wrong side of 50 years old. While making the series he worked 18-hour days, subsisting on a daily diet of junk food and 100 cigarettes (on his return to England he was to suffer a heart attack).
Set in Manhattan, the series was particularly popular in the United States: he won a Golden Globe award for best actor in a dramatic television series in 1987, and was nominated five times for an Emmy.
In 1990 Woodward starred in an American television series called Over My Dead Body, in which he played a mystery writer solving real crimes. Although it proved to be short-lived, it led the following year to his much more successful ITV true crime drama documentary series In Suspicious Circumstances, in which he guided viewers through some of the most celebrated British crimes of the 20th century.
Edward Albert Arthur Woodward was born in Croydon on June 1 1930, the only child of a factory worker, and educated at Kingston College. He made his stage debut aged five in a talent contest. His initial ambition was to become a journalist, but he settled for working briefly in a sanitary engineer's office. When he was only 16 he managed to gain a place at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. After making his first professional appearance at the Castle Theatre, Farnham, in 1946, he attracted a loyal following of admirers during his years with the Croydon Repertory Company.
Following wide experience touring throughout England and Scotland, and a tour of India and Ceylon in Shakespeare and Shaw, Woodward arrived in London in 1955 with Where There's a Will at the Garrick. There followed small parts in the musical A Girl Called Jo (Piccadilly) and Doctor in the House (Victoria Palace).
After good reviews for his role as Owen Tudor in Rosemary Anne Sisson's The Queen and the Welshman (Edinburgh Festival and Lyric Hammersmith, 1957), and stints in the musical Salad Days and in West End revue, Woodward joined the Memorial Theatre Company at Stratford-on-Avon, for which his roles included Mercutio in Romeo and Juliet, Laertes to Michael Redgrave's Hamlet, and Claudio in Much Ado About Nothing.
Back in the West End, Woodward had one of his greatest successes in Charles Dyer's study of loneliness, Rattle of a Simple Man, which he had directed in South Africa before it reached London. He played the part of the shy and gentle Mancunian Percy, a timid but imaginative north-country football fan who, for a bet, spent the night with a London prostitute (Sheila Hancock).
When the play reached Broadway in 1963, Noël Coward, who was preparing a musical version of his own wartime success Blithe Spirit, found Woodward's acting "marvellous" and cast him as the husband, Charles Condomine, in High Spirits. After the latter play had its Broadway opening, Coward described Woodward in his diary: "One of the nicest and most co-operative actors I have ever met or worked with. He is the only one who has given me no trouble at all."
On his return to England Woodward appeared in Henry James's The High Bid at the Mermaid, while his Sydney Carton in Two Cities (Palace, 1969) won the Variety award for best performer in a musical. Then came a stint at Olivier's National Theatre as Flamineo in Webster's The White Devil and as Cyrano de Bergerac at the Old Vic in 1970.
Other London stage credits included Robin Hood in Babes in the Wood (Palladium, 1972); George Szabo, the monocled lover of Judi Dench, in Molnar's The Wolf (Oxford Playhouse, Queen's and New London, 1974); and the Duke of Bristol in Lonsdale's On Approval (Haymarket, 1975).
In 1980 Woodward co-directed and played in a tour of The Beggar's Opera (Birmingham Rep, 1979), and at the Ludlow Festival he won wide praise as Richard III – The Daily Telegraph's critic hailing his "emotional complexities and psychological depths".
Other stage credits included Private Lives (Australia, 1980), The Assassin (Greenwich, 1982) and The Dead Secret (Plymouth and Richmond, 1992).
Woodward appeared in more than 2,000 parts in television productions. They included Guy Crouchbank in the Evelyn Waugh trilogy Sword of Honour; Cassius in Julius Caesar; Lopakin in The Cherry Orchard; Sir Samuel Hoare in Churchill: The Wilderness Years; and a binman in the BBC drama Common As Muck.
In March this year he joined the long-running BBC soap opera EastEnders, playing the character of Tommy Clifford.
Meanwhile, in the cinema Woodward gave a notably moving performance in the title role of Breaker Morant (1980), the Australian film about a shocking injustice in the Boer War. On the big screen he also played Sergeant Neil Howie, alongside Christopher Lee and Diane Cilento, in The Wicker Man (1973); Commander Powell in Who Dares Wins (1982); Saul in King David; the Ghost of Christmas Present in A Christmas Carol; Merlin in Merlin and the Sword; Captain Haldane in The Young Winston; the racehorse trainer Josh Gifford in Champions; and Sergeant Wellbeloved in Stand Up Virgin Soldiers. Earlier this year, despite suffering from ill health, he starred as the Rev Frederick Densham in A Congregation of Ghosts.
Woodward had a fine tenor voice, appearing on a number of occasions in The Good Old Days and making a dozen LPs. He also recorded three albums of poetry, capitalising on the reputation he had forged at Stratford as a lyrical speaker of verse.
He was appointed OBE in 1978.
In 1996 Woodward underwent triple heart bypass surgery, and in 2003 he was diagnosed with prostate cancer.
Edward Woodward married first, in 1952, Venetia Mary Collett, with whom he had two sons and a daughter, all of whom became successful actors. The marriage was dissolved in 1986, and he married secondly, in 1987, Michele Dotrice, daughter of the actor Roy Dotrice and best known for her role as Betty Spencer in Some Mothers Do 'Ave 'Em; they had a daughter.
English actor Edward Woodward has died today, aged 79. The actor was unwell for several months, suffering from a number of illnesses including pneumonia. He died in hospital in Cornwall, England.

Born in Croydon, London, Woodward was perhaps best known for his role as Sergeant Howie in the 1973 cult British horror film ''The Wicker Man''. The director of that film, Robin Hardy, described him as "one of the greatest actors of his generation" and "an extremely nice human being". His appearance in the Australian film ''Breaker Morant'' was also highly acclaimed.

He began his career in theatre, starting out in 1946. He later worked across the country and internationally, appearing in the West End, London and Broadway, New York. In 1963 he was cast in Noël Coward's Broadway production ''High Spirits''. Coward described him as "One of the nicest and most co-operative actors I have ever met or worked with. He is the only one who has given me no trouble at all."

Woodward later appeared in over 2,000 television productions, notably starring in the American show ''The Equalizer'' in the 1980s, in addition to ''Callan'' on ITV in Britain. Outside of film and television, he recorded three albums of poetry and several LPs.

Despite having triple heart bypass surgery in 1996, and being diagnosed with prostate cancer in 2003, he continued to work. His final television appearance was in six episodes of the British soap opera ''EastEnders'' earlier this year.

"He was a delight to work with, and delivered a characteristically touching and layered performance," said Diederick Santer, the executive producer of ''EastEnders''. "Our thoughts are with his family."

Woodward had two sons and a daughter from his first marriage, to Venetia Mary Collett in 1953. All three became successful actors. In 1987 he married the actress Michele Dotrice, with whom he had a daughter.