Born in the U.S. to Irish parents, McGoohan was an actor. Best known first as “John Drake” in the 1960 half-hour series Danger Man, which later morphed into the hour-long series Secret Agent, McGoohan hit cult status when he co-created and starred in 1967’s The Prisoner, where he played a spy who resigns, only to be taken against his will to a retirement “village” where he could not escape, and his captors, who only referred to him as “Number Six”, could not break him.
The situation the character finds himself in is “a reflection of the pressure on all of us today to be numbered, to give up our individualism,” McGoohan said. “It’s not meant to be subtle. It’s meant to say: This little village is our world.” The series only lasted for 17 episodes, which doesn’t seem like much, except that McGoohan really wanted to tell the story in just seven. McGoohan died in Santa Monica, Calif., on January 13. He was 80.