Actor and playwright Jason Miller, best known for playing father Damien Karras in horror film The Exorcist, has died aged 62.

Miller, who earned an Oscar nomination for the role and won a Pulitzer Prize for his 1973 play That Championship Season, suffered a heart attack on Sunday.

He also won a Tony award for the production, about a reunion of a smalltown high school basketball team at the home of their aged coach.

He was the son-in-law of 1950s and 60s screen star Jackie Gleason and the father of actor Jason Patric, who appeared in of The Lost Boys and Sleepers.

A big screen version of That Championship Season, released in 1982, starred Robert Mitchum and Martin Sheen.

Miller gave up writing in favour of acting after his Pulitzer success, but recently went back behind the scenes to rework his first play, Nobody Hears a Broken Drum.

He was due to play Oscar Madison in an upcoming run of The Odd Couple at the Scranton Public Theater, Pennsylvania, where he was the venue's artistic director.

He was also said to be working on a film script of the life of Jackie Gleason.

Born in Scranton in 1939, he married Linda Gleason in 1963, but they divorced a decade later.