Gregory Walcott, a character actor whose résumé included numerous television westerns, several Clint Eastwood movies and prestige films like “Norma Rae” — but who was probably best known as one of the stars of “Plan 9 From Outer Space,” often called the worst movie ever made — died on Friday at his home in the Canoga Park neighborhood of Los Angeles. He was 87.

His death was confirmed by his son, Todd Mattox, who said Mr. Walcott had been in poor health for some time.

When Mr. Walcott, a tall, ruggedly handsome Southerner, was offered the key role of a pilot in “Plan 9 From Outer Space,” the idiosyncratic director Edward D. Wood Jr.’s low-budget 1959 oddity about aliens who bring the dead back to life, he had already been in the hit Henry Fonda Navy comedy “Mister Roberts” (1955) and other movies. He said in a 1998 interview that the “Plan 9” script “made no sense” but that he took the job because one of the producers was a friend of his.

“I thought maybe my name could give the show some credibility,” he said.

The film seemed destined to be no more than a footnote in Mr. Walcott’s busy career. He was a regular on the 1961-62 police series “87th Precinct” and had guest roles on “Bonanza,” “Maverick” and virtually every other TV western. He acted alongside Mr. Eastwood on “Rawhide” and in “The Eiger Sanction” (1975), “Every Which Way but Loose” (1978) and other movies. Often cast as an authority figure, he played lawmen in Steven Spielberg’s “The Sugarland Express” (1974) and Martin Ritt’s “Norma Rae” (1979).