Larry Hagman, renowned for playing one of television's most notorious villains, J.R. Ewing, has died aged 81.

In 1980 Channel 10 promoted the ''Who shot J.R?'' episode of Dallas turning it into a TV event, but in the end throat cancer took his life in a Dallas hospital.

The son of actress Mary Martin and a district attorney, Benjamin Jack Hagman, he first shot to fame playing astronaut and genie keeper Major Anthony ''Tony'' Nelson in the 1960s sitcom I Dream of Jeannie alongside Barbara Eden. But it was as J.R. Ewing in Dallas that he became a household name and Hagman was joined at his bedside by co-stars Linda Gray and Patrick Duffy, who played his wife Sue Ellen and brother Bobby, a United Kingdom newspaper has reported. Linda Gray's agent, Jeffrey Lane, confirmed the death, The Dallas Morning News said.

Hagman battled drugs and alcohol for years and had a liver transplant in 1995 and would reportedly drink bottles of champagne on the Dallas set.