LOS ANGELES - SYDNEY Chaplin, second son of Charlie Chaplin and himself a Tony-winning actor who starred on Broadway opposite Judy Holliday in Bells Are Ringing and Barbra Streisand in Funny Girl, has died at age 82.

Chaplin died on Tuesday at his home in Rancho Mirage, longtime family friend Jerry Bodie told The Associated Press on Thursday. He said Chaplin had recently suffered a stroke.

'He was one of those guys who just sort of trooped through history,' Mr Bodie said of Chaplin, recalling his friend as a gregarious man who struck up friendships with everyone from Albert Einstein to Frank Sinatra.

Chaplin appeared in two of his father's later films, Limelight (1952) and The Countess from Hong Kong (1967). But he never achieved the success in Hollywood that he enjoyed in New York's musical theatre.

He won his Tony for Bells Are Ringing, the 1956 Betty Comden and Adolph Green musical about a telephone answering service operator (Holliday) who falls in love with a customer (Chaplin). New York Herald Tribune critic Walter Kerr wrote that the actor 'doubles the evening's warmth by the simple expedient of believing in its love story'.

His best-remembered show, though, was the 1964 smash Funny Girl as Nicky Arnstein, the gambler who woos Streisand in her star-making role as Fanny Brice. The New York Times called him 'a tall, elegant figure as Nick, gallant in courting and doing his best when he must be noble'. -- AP