at his Ashford home in Kent, England. He died of complications from COVID and pneumonia, his agent Julian Owen announced.

Colley portrayed dramatist Modest Ilyich Tchaikovsky, younger brother of the famed composer, in The Music Lovers (1971). His six other roles with Russel include The Devils (1971), The Boy Friend (1971), Mahler (1974), Lisztomania (1975) — as Frédéric Chopin — The Rainbow (1989) and Prisoner of Honor (1991).

In his 60-year career, Colley enjoyed an association with members of Monty Python. He worked with director Terry Gilliam in Jabberwocky (1977) and with Michael Palin and Terry Jones on a 1977 episode of the BBC’s Ripping Yarns and played Jesus in Life of Brian (1979).

His Star Wars character, Admiral Piett, served as the first officer of the flagship Star Dreadnought Executor under Admiral Kendal Ozzel (Michael Sheard) in The Empire Strikes Back. Then assumed command of the ship after Ozzel’s death at Vader’s hands.

Born in Manchester on December 7, 1937, Colley began his acting career in 1961. He showed up on episodes of The Avengers, Coronation Street and Emergency-Ward 10 and in such films as How I Won the War and Oh! What a Lovely War in the 60s.

Other notable roles include the Duke of Vienna in Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure for the BBC in 1979; a Soviet colonel in Clint Eastwood’s Firefox; Adolf Eichmann in the 1985 NBC telefilm Wallenberg: A Hero’s Story; a Nazi in the 1988-89 ABC miniseries War and Remembrance; the pirate Ben Gunn on the 1986 Disney Channel miniseries Return to Treasure Island; and a crime boss on 2016’s Peaky Blinders.

“If you let it, it becomes a way of life,” he said in a 2008 interview. “I think we’re now into the third generation of people, who were not born, and it keeps it alive. For me, the personal experience is a very long time ago, but this kind of secondary experience is going on all of the time. I’ve just signed a picture for someone just a minute ago. I think it may outlive me.”