Robert Blake has died at the age of 89 after a battle with heart disease, according to his family.

Blake worked for more than 60 years in Hollywood, starring in classics like Treasure of the Sierra Madre with Humphrey Bogart and In Cold Blood with John Forsythe. He was also the star of a number of studio westerns under the stage name Bobby Blake. 

On television, he was also known as undercover New York City detective Tony Baretta in Baretta, which aired on ABC for four seasons in the mid-1970s.

But his career derailed in the early 2000s when he was charged with the murder of his wife Bonny Lee Bakley, along with solicitation of murder, conspiracy and special circumstances of lying in wait.

A jury, though, found him not guilt of soliciting a former stuntman he worked with on Baretta to kill Bakley, and her murder was never solved.

Blake was born Michael James Gubitosi on September 18, 1933 in Nutley, New Jersey. 

His birth certificate lists his father as James Gubitosi, but Blake would later learn that his biological father was actually James’ brother, his Uncle Tony, who had an affair with his mother.

Blake has said that as a child he received little affection at home, and was at times beaten and locked in a closet.

But James also got him into show business, forming a family act, The Three Hillbillies — comprising Blake, a half-brother and a half-sister — that performed in parks and on sidewalks.

By the age of 2, he was performing his own song, Show Me The Way To Go Home, in which he pretended to be drunk.

His family moved to Los Angeles when he was just 4, and started working as extras at MGM Studios in its Our Gang films.

One day, a child actor was supposed to say the line, ‘Confidentially, it stinks,’ but could not pronounce the word ‘confidentially.’

So Blake tugged on the director’s pantleg to get his attention, recited the line and became an actor.

From there, he took on a number of childhood roles as Bobby Blake including Rin Tin Tin with Robert Woods and a persistent lottery ticket dealer in the Treasure of Sierra Madre with Humphrey Bogart.

Still, his home troubles continued, and he started getting bullied in high school — after which he started drinking heavily and doing drugs. 

After a short stint in the army in the 1950s,Blake returned to show business.

He took on roles in a number of classic movies before landing his standout role as murderer Perry Smith in the 1967 film adaptation of Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood.

His performance, Los Angeles Times movie citric Charles Champlin wrote at the time ‘made Smith horrifyingly comprehensible and the deed all the more ghastly for its seeming inevitability.’ 

The following year, he won an Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series for his role as Baretta.

His fans would spot him regularly on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson, where he was a recurring guest who appeared in a number of skits with his host friend.

He is also remembered for his Eveready battery commercials in which he would dare someone to knock one off his shoulder. 

But he soon started to develop a reputation in Hollywood for being difficult to work with, calling for script and other changes.

On the set of Baretta, he argued with producers about casting decisions, scenery and even props.

He promised to change his ways in 1985, when he started to star in a series he helped create, Hell Town, in which he played a feisty priest in Los Angeles.

‘This is the new image: The Mr. Nice Robert Blake,’ he told the Associated Press.

But after just 16 episodes, he walked away from his series and stayed away from acting until the 1993 television movie Judgment Day: The John List story.

Blake’s final role came in the 1977 David Lynch film Lost Highway.

Just a few years later, his career derailed when he was accused of murdering Bakley, 44, in 2001.

The two were enjoying dinner at a Studio City restaurant, after which Bakley got into her vehicle, where she was shot in the head on May 4.

Blake claimed he escorted his wife to the car, but went back inside the restaurant to retrieve a gun he accidentally left behind.

He said he found his wife wounded in the car when he returned.

At first, Los Angeles police did not consider Blake a suspect, finding the murder weapon ditched in a nearby dumpster.

But one year later, he was arrested and charged with the shooting.

He spent 11 months in jail before bail was even set, and spent millions on lawyers and private investigators. 

Over the course of a highly-publicized, three-month trial, details about their unhappy marriage emerged, including that Bakley had at least a dozen different aliases and 10 former husbands.

Prosecutors argued that she trapped Blake into a loveless marriage by becoming pregnant with his child.

The defense, meanwhile, had to argue that the actor who so convincingly played murderers like Perry Smith — who slaughtered an entire family in Kansas — and John List — who killed his own wife, children and mother in a shooting spree — was not capable of carrying out a murder in real life.

By 2005, a jury of seven men and five women did not believe the stuntman’s testimony, citing his history of drug use.

But Blake was not in the clear — with Bakley’s family suing him soon after.

He was forced to testify, and over the course of eight days on the stand, the Los Angeles Times reports, he came across as angry and callous.

A jury ultimately found that Blake had ‘intentionally caused’ Bakley’s death, and her family was awarded $30million in damages — though that was later reduced to $15mllion.

‘As a group,’ the jury foreman said at the time, ‘we believe that Mr. Blake was probably his own worst enemy on the stand.’ 

In the aftermath, Blake had to declare bankruptcy. 

Blake would later write his memoir The Life of a Rascal.

In more recent years, he has been living quietly in his home in Los Angles, where he enjoyed listening to jazz music, playing his guitar, reading poetry and watching classic films, Deadline reports.