Geoffrey Holder, Bond villain and 7-Up spokesman, is dead at 84

(Image credit: Neilson Barnard/Getty Images)

last updated 8 January 2015

Geoffrey Holder was a sort of Renaissance man — an accomplished visual artist, dancer, choreographer, costume designer, and composer with two Tony Awards — but he will mostly be remembered for two roles: The 7-Up spokesman in the 1970s and '80s who declared the soft drink "absolutely maahvelous" and Baron Samedi, the villainous Voodoo henchman in the James Bond film Live and Let Die. Holder died on Sunday at age 84 in New York, after being ill with pneumonia.

Holder was born in Trinidad and Tobago in 1930, moved to England, and then New York City in 1954, when he made his Broadway debut. Along with the Bond movie, Holder was in Annie (1982), Doctor Doolittle (1967), Boomerang (1992), and Woody Allen's Everything You Wanted to Know About Sex. He was a painter, photographer, and sculptor whose work was shown at the Guggenheim in New York and Washington's Corcoran Gallery. And he choreographed, designed costumes for, and directed The Wiz on Broadway — the source of his Tonys.

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Peter has worked as a news and culture writer and editor at The Week since the site's launch in 2008. He covers politics, world affairs, religion and cultural currents. His journalism career began as a copy editor at a financial newswire and has included editorial positions at The New York Times Magazine, Facts on File, and Oregon State University.

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