Tributes were paid last night to Paul Scofield, the stage actor who won an Academy Award for the film A Man for All Seasons, and who has died at the age of 86.

"He was a great friend and a great man," Dame Judi Dench said.

"He is such a manifestly good man, so humane and decent, and curiously void of ego," said director Richard Eyre, former artistic director of Britain's National Theatre.

Scofield, who had a rumbling voice once compared with a Rolls-Royce engine, died after a long battle with leukemia.

Known for his lack of ego and quiet personal life, Scofield made few films even after the Oscar for his 1966 portrayal of Tudor statesman Sir Thomas More and was a stage actor by preference and inclination.

Richard Burton, once regarded as heir to Laurence Olivier and John Gielgud at the summit of British theatre, said the title belonged to Scofield. "Of the 10 greatest moments in the theatre, eight are Scofield's," he said.

Simon Callow, who acted with Scofield in the premiere of the play Amadeus in 1979, said: "He had a kind of extraordinary physical warmth, almost literally like being near a fire, in a way that I have almost never experienced with another actor. He had a charisma, a hypnotism, a kind of spell that he cast on an audience."

The actress Felicity Kendal, who worked with Scofield on three stage shows, said: "He was beautiful, sexy, mesmerising. He was a genius actor. "

Scofield was reportedly offered a knighthood three times, but declined. In 2001, however, he was named a Companion of Honour.