Jim Brown, the Cleveland Browns fullback who was acclaimed as one of the greatest players in pro football history, and who remained in the public eye as a Hollywood action hero and a civil rights activist, though his name was later tarnished by accusations of violent conduct against women, died on Thursday night at his home in Los Angeles. He was 87.

His family announced his death on Friday on Instagram but did not cite the cause.

Playing for the Browns from 1957 to 1965 after earning all-American honors at Syracuse University in football and lacrosse, Brown helped take Cleveland to the 1964 National Football League championship.

In any game, he dragged defenders when he wasn’t running over them or flattening them with a stiff arm. He eluded them with his footwork when he wasn’t sweeping around ends and outrunning them. He never missed a game, piercing defensive lines in 118 consecutive regular-season games, though he played one year with a broken toe and another with a sprained wrist.

“All you can do is grab, hold, hang on and wait for help,” Sam Huff, the Hall of Fame middle linebacker for the Giants and the Washington team now known as the Commanders, once told Time magazine.

Brown was voted football’s greatest player of the 20th century by a six-member panel of experts assembled by The Associated Press in 1999. A panel of 85 experts selected by NFL Films in 2010 placed him No. 2 all time behind the wide receiver Jerry Rice of the San Francisco 49ers.

He was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1971, the Lacrosse Hall of Fame in 1984 and the College Football Hall of Fame in 1995.

Brown was still in top form and only 30 years old when he stunned the football world in the summer of 1966 by retiring to pursue an acting career.