(CNN) -- Actor Gregory Peck, who won an Oscar for his portrayal of upstanding Southern lawyer Atticus Finch in 1962's "To Kill a Mockingbird," has died. He was 87.
Peck died Wednesday night, spokesman Monroe Friedman told The Associated Press. His wife of 48 years, Veronique, was at his side.
"She told me very briefly that he died peacefully. She was with him, holding his hand, and he just went to sleep," Friedman said. "He had just been getting older and more fragile. He wasn't really ill. He just sort of ran his course and died of old age."
The character of Finch was recently named the No. 1 hero in movie history in an American Film Institute survey.
Peck was best known for roles of dignified statesmen and people who followed a strong code of ethics: a magazine reporter confronting anti-Semitism in "Gentleman's Agreement" (1947, a best picture Oscar winner), a military officer in "The Guns of Navarone" (1961), the president of the United States in "Amazing Grace and Chuck" (1987).
But he also could play against type. He was a conflicted father in the original "Cape Fear" (1962) and a Nazi in "The Boys From Brazil" (1978), the latter against Laurence Olivier's Nazi hunter.
He also gave an air of wondrous bemusement to his reporter in Audrey Hepburn's first major film, "Roman Holiday" (1953), for which Hepburn won an Oscar.
He knew his image was what resonated with moviegoers.
"Inside of all the makeup and the character and makeup, it's you, and I think that's what the audience is really interested in ... you, how you're going to cope with the situation, the obstacles, the troubles that the writer put in front of you," he told CNN.
All told, Peck was nominated for five Academy Awards. Besides "Mockingbird," he also was nominated for "The Keys of the Kingdom" (1945), "The Yearling" (1946), "Gentleman's Agreement" and "Twelve O'Clock High" (1949).
Peck's life was as dignified as his most notable film roles. He served as president of the Motion Picture Academy of Arts and Sciences and was active in the Motion Picture and Television Fund, American Cancer Society, National Endowment for the Arts and other causes. His divorce from his first wife, Greta, was amicable.
A lifelong liberal activist, he even earned a place on President Nixon's enemies list.
But he played down his own work.
"I'm not a do-gooder," Peck said after learning of the academy's Jean Hersholt humanitarian award in 1968. "It embarrassed me to be classified as a humanitarian. I simply take part in activities that I believe in."
'You can collect yourself and do it'
He was born Eldred Gregory Peck on April 5, 1916, in La Jolla, California. He never liked the name. "My mother had found 'Eldred' in a phone book, and I was stuck with it," he said, according to the AP. His parents divorced when their son was 6, and he spent part of his childhood traveling between each of them and his maternal grandmother.
He spent the remainder of his childhood at a Roman Catholic military academy in Los Angeles, then matriculated at the University of California at Berkeley.
An English major, he had no plans to go into acting until he was accosted by a campus director looking for a tall actor for an adaptation of "Moby Dick," the AP notes. "I don't know why I said yes," he recalled in a 1989 interview with the AP. "I guess I was fearless, and it seemed like it might be fun. I wasn't any good, but I ended up doing five plays my last year in college."
After graduation, he headed for New York, where he worked odd jobs -- including as a barker at the 1939 World's Fair -- and studying with Sanford Meisner and Martha Graham. He made his Broadway debut as the lead in Emlyn Williams' "Morning Star."
He recalled the opening night in a 1989 interview with the AP.
"In the dressing room I gave myself a kick and said, 'Get out there!' I was jittery for the first five minutes, and then I wasn't jittery anymore. You can die up there and say, 'Call it off, give 'em their money back and let 'em go home.' Or you can collect yourself and do it."
A bad back kept Peck out of World War II.
He made his film debut in 1944 with "Days of Glory," playing a Russian, and followed that with a Roman Catholic priest in "The Keys to the Kingdom," Alfred Hitchcock's "Spellbound" (1945) and "The Yearling." By that point, he had established himself as a major star.
A star for nearly six decades
"From his debut, Peck was always a star and rarely less than a major box-office success," writes David Thomson in the New Biographical Dictionary of Film. In his roles, "he is a protagonist for middle American aspirations, pathfinder for the straight and narrow ... [he] never succumbs to the awful doubts that drag down Gary Cooper."
"Gentleman's Agreement" was considered a bold film in its day, tackling controversial subject matter. According to the AP, Peck commented in 1971 that his agent cautioned him: "You're just establishing yourself, and a lot of people will resent the picture. Anti-Semitism runs very deep in this country."
Peck ignored his advice.
He ranked "Gentleman's Agreement" as one of his personal favorites, along with "Captain Horatio Hornblower" (1951) and "The Guns of Navarone." But he had a special place in his heart for "To Kill a Mockingbird."
In the film, based on the award-winning Harper Lee novel, Peck played a small-town Southern lawyer who defies public sentiment to defend a black man accused of rape.
"I put everything I had into it -- all my feelings and everything I'd learned in 46 years of living, about family life and fathers and children," he told the AP in 1989. "And my feelings about racial justice and inequality and opportunity."
His knightly image gave rise to frequent rumors that he would run for political office, particularly after Ronald Reagan defeated Pat Brown in the 1966 California governor's race. But Peck wouldn't have it.
"I never gave a thought to running," Peck always replied. "Not even in my heart of hearts do I have an ambition to do that."
With Greta Peck, he had three sons, Jonathan, Stephen and Carey; Jonathan, a TV reporter, committed suicide at the age of 30. The star married Veronique Passani, a Paris reporter, in 1954. They had two children, Anthony and Cecilia, both actors.
That's sad. I liked him.
Oscar-winner Gregory Peck dead 
