James Garner, best known for playing the title character in the 1950s western show "Maverick" as well as LA detective Jim Rockford in the 1970s television series "The Rockford Files," was found dead in his California home Saturday night.

The Los Angeles Police Department confirmed to The Associated Press that the 86-year-old had passed away in his home in Brentwood.

Garner was a smoker for the majority of his life, underwent open-heart quintuple bypass surgery in 1988 and suffered a stroke in 2008. However, the actor's cause of death was not immediately known.

With a more than 50-year-long career, Garner transitioned between television and movies many times, accumulating more than 80 credits to his name. Washington Post critic Tom Shales once described the Emmy award-winning actor as having "embodied the crusty, sardonic and self-effacing strain of American masculinity."

A veteran of the Korean War, Garner was drafted into the Army in 1950. He was wounded twice and earned two Purple Hearts. After returning from the war, he attended the University of Oklahoma. After college, he went to California to work with his father, until he signed with agent and friend Paul Gregory, who had encouraged Garner to become an actor.

In his 2011 autobiography, "The Garner Files," co-written with Jon Winokur, Garner discussed his involvement in suing Warner Bros. studio in order to be released from his contract in the early 1960s. Warner Bros. had suspended the actor without pay following a writers' strike, and Garner successfully broke his contract and was awarded damages for the dismissal.

In 2005, the Screen Actors Guild bestowed Garner with a lifetime achievement award.

A lifelong Democrat, James Garner was a supporter of civil rights and environmental movements. It was at a political campaign rally for Adlai Stevenson in 1956 that Garner met his wife, Lois Clarke. Clarke, along with their daughter Greta, and Clarke's daughter from a previous marriage, Kimberly, survives him.