Robert Rietti: Actor who became best-known for providing voices for Bond villains, as well as the later roles of Jack Hawkins

Rietti enjoyed a distinguished career in hundreds of films and television programmes, including such classics as Doctor Zhivago

Rietti, left, as a monk in ‘The Omen’, with Gregory Peck, right, and David Warner, centre

Robert Rietti played James Bond's arch-enemy Ernst Stavro Blofeld in For Your Eyes Only (1981) when Roger Moore had a licence to kill. Sixteen years earlier, in Thunderball, when Sean Connery was 007, he had served as the urbane, sadistic villain Emilio Largo, who kept sharks as pets and used his enemies as fish food. And in You Only Live Twice (1967) he was on Bond's side when he took on the role of the Japanese secret service chief Tiger Tanaka.

Rietti enjoyed a distinguished career in hundreds of films and television programmes, including such classics as Doctor Zhivago (1965), but in many of his biggest hits he never actually appeared on screen: Rietti supplied voices for actors whose own voices or accents were considered to be not quite what was required.

The Sicilian actor Adolfo Celi looked the part as Bond villain Emilio Largo, complete with eye patch, but he struggled with English and spoke with a thick accent. Jack Hawkins was a huge star, but he had had throat cancer and in later years had an artificial voice box. Robert Shaw was also a big star, but his dialogue for the 1979 film Avalanche Express needed to be rerecorded and getting Shaw back was not an option, as he had died in the meantime.

Rietti's father Vittorio was a distinguished Italian-Jewish actor who developed a career in theatre and latterly television in England, though he maintained links with his homeland. His son was born Lucio Herbert Rietti in the Paddington area of London in 1923. He created his own theatre in the family garage and put on plays for friends and his dog, Flossy.

His father encouraged his acting ambitions and by the time he was 10 Rietti was already acting in theatre and films under the name Bobby Rietti. He played the character of Professor, the head of the boys' gang, in the 1935 family film Emil and the Detectives. He was in his mid-teens when the Second World War broke out and was locked up as an enemy alien, along with British fascists, one of whom tried to kill him. He was saved by the intervention of Italian gangsters. He subsequently joined a theatrical group that put on plays for the troops.

After the war he had small roles in such varied projects as Blue Murder at St Trinian's (1957), as a policeman, and A Tale of Two Cities (1958), as the jury foreman. He later played a monk in The Omen (1976), a rival piano teacher to Shirley MacLaine in Madame Sousatzka (1988) and Professor Sogliato in the Silence of the Lambs sequel, Hannibal (2001).

But from fairly early in his career Rietti was in demand to rerecord other people's dialogue. His voice was calm, mellifluous, urbane, but sometimes with a hint of menace. He voiced the character of the secret agent Strangways in the first Bond film, Dr No, in 1962. Strangways is killed in the opening scenes, but minutes later Rietti was providing the voice for someone else.

He did seven Bond films in all: "In nearly every Bond picture there's been a foreign villain and in almost every case they've used my voice," he told Empire magazine in 1994. He established himself as "The Man with a Thousand Voices", providing dialogue for foreign actors who could not speak English, but also impersonating familiar British and US stars who for one reason or another were not available to record or rerecord dialogue themselves.

After Thunderball, the fourth Bond film, Adolfo Celi was showered with offers, and Rietti came as part of the package. "I had a job for life," he said in an interview on the Film 94 television programme. On the 1974 Agatha Christie adaptation And Then There Were None he revoiced Celi as well as four other stars, including the German actor Gert Frobe (who had played another Bond villain, Goldfinger). "In two or three scenes all five were talking to each other and apparently no one was aware that all the voices came from the same mouth," he recalled.

He provided the voice for Jack Hawkins on many of his later films, including Waterloo (1970), in which Hawkins played General Picton. The film-makers were so impressed with his efforts that, according to Rietti, he wound up playing no fewer than 98 different characters in that one film. He directed dubbing sessions involving other actors on many films, including Sergio Leone's 1984 masterpiece Once Upon a Time in America, and he also wrote and translated plays. In 1959 he and his father received Italian knighthoods and his title was elevated in 1988 to Cavaliere Ufficale.

Rietti was active in London's Orthodox Jewish community: he visited Israel several times and his eldest son, Jonathan, became a rabbi. His wife died in 2008. They are survived by two sons and two daughters.

BRIAN PENDREIGH

Lucio Herbert Rietti (Robert Rietti), actor: born London 8 February 1923; married 1958 Tina (two daughters, two sons); died London 3 April 2015.