Harris Yulin, a character actor who for more than six decades portrayed unsympathetic, menacing, corrupt and glowering guys on stage and on screen, died on June 10 in Manhattan. He was 87.

Mr. Yulin never became a marquee name, but to many audiences, he was instantly recognizable. He portrayed J. Edgar Hoover, Hamlet and Senator Joseph McCarthy. Other roles ranged from crooked cops and politicians to a lecherous television anchorman.

Mr. Yulin never stopped working. At his death, he was preparing for a role in the TV series “American Classic,” with Kevin Kline and Laura Linney. The director said of him in a statement after his death, “His marriage of immense technique with an always fresh sense of discovery gave his work an immediacy and vitality and purity I’ve experienced nowhere else.”