Nominated for an Oscar for his first film role, as a cackling psychopath in “Kiss of Death” (1947), Richard Widmark spent a half-century playing hard men on one side or the other of what’s right. Widmark, who died Monday at 93 at his home in Roxbury, Conn., hadn’t been in a movie in a decade and a half. If he lacked the raw star power to open a film, he was still one of those rare actors who appeared near the top of the marquis in almost every film he appeared in.

After a decade in radio soap operas and Broadway, Widmark got fourth billing in “Kiss of Death” — Victor Mature topped the bill. In his critical scene, Widmark shakes down a wheelchair-bound matron, looking for her son.

“I’m askin’ ya, where’s that squealin’ son of yours? You think a squealer can get away from me? Huh? You know what I do to squealers? I let ’em have it in the belly, so they can roll around for a long time thinkin’ it over. You’re worse than him, tellin’ me he’s comin’ back? Ya lyin’ old hag!”

Then he pushes her wheelchair down the stairs.

The electrifying performance inspired 20th Century Fox to pick up the option in his contract, and Widmark spent seven years playing heavies and military men in such films as “The Street With No Name” (1948) and “Yellow Sky” (1948). By 1953, he jovially complained to gossip maven Hedda Hopper: “You know, for a fellow that was 4-F, I’ve been in every branch of the armed services and then some.”

One exception to the typecasting was the whaling-themed “Down to the Sea in Ships” (1949), in which he played a sympathetic sailor. Another was Elia Kazan’s “Panic in the Streets” (1950), in which he played a doctor fighting the plague.

In 1956, Widmark formed his own production company and produced several films in the ensuing years, including “Time Limit” (1957) and the grim Cold War naval thriller “The Bedford Incident” (1965).

He played a prosecutor in “Judgment at Nuremberg” (1961), a businessman with a mysterious past in “Murder on the Orient Express” (1974), and a grizzled FBI agent helping Henry Fonda foil an amusement park bomber in “Rollercoaster” (1977 in Sensurround). His last appearance was as a featured voice in the 1992 biography “Lincoln.” The film was made for television, a medium Widmark only reluctantly embraced, beginning with his short-lived series “Madigan,” based on the 1968 police thriller of the same title.

Widmark had a reputation for taciturnity, a quality that stems at least in part from being raised in rural Minnesota and Illinois. Yet he won a state oratory contest while majoring in political science at Lake Forest College, and, after teaching drama at his alma mater for a couple of years, moved to New York in 1938. His stentorian voice guaranteed him steady work in radio serials including “Aunt Jenny’s Real Life Stories” and “Inner Sanctum.” He started working in regional theater and then, in 1943, made his Broadway debut as an Army Air Corps lieutenant in “Kiss and Tell.” A perforated eardrum kept him out of the actual armed forces, though he did entertain troops as part of the American Theatre Wing. He appeared in four more Broadway productions before being snapped up by Hollywood. Unlike many ex-theater people, he did not mourn the exposure to live audiences. “I don’t like that life,” he told the New York Times in 1977. “I hate cities and I love farming and a million other things that have nothing to do with the theater.”

He bought a working ranch north of Los Angeles, where he raised a daughter and 30 head of cattle. He also lived part of each year on his farm in Connecticut. Widmark refused to do talk shows — he called them “a menace.” In 1971, he told the New York Times,”I think a performer should do his work and then shut up.”

He sold the ranch after his wife of 55 years, Ora Jean Hazelwood, died in 1997. He was remarried and is survived by his wife, Susan Blanchard, as well as by his daughter, Ann, who at one time was married to the pitcher Sandy Koufax.