In his comic trilogy of Austin Powers movies, Mike Myers created and starred as several characters, including Powers, a groovy 1960s photographer-cum-secret agent, and his nemesis, the cackling but sweetly naive Dr Evil. For the second and most successful outing, Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me (1999), Dr Evil was joined by a cloned sidekick, Mini-Me, an exact replica of himself in miniature played by the actor Verne Troyer, who has died aged 49.

The character was originally killed off at the end of that film, but his popularity at early test screenings earned him a reprieve and he returned for the final instalment, Austin Powers in Goldmember (2002).

There are no straight men in the Austin Powers movies – each actor gets a chance to be funny, or at least to be humiliated amusingly – and Troyer, who stood 2ft 8in as a result of cartilage-hair hypoplasia, received a large chunk of the audience’s laughter, not to mention goodwill. The Spy Who Shagged Me showed him committing acts of violence disproportionate to his size: at one point, he lifts Austin and spins him around above his head. But Myers and the director, Jay Roach, later realised that it was more effective in slapstick terms to show the character as victim rather than aggressor, thrown around like a doll or booted across a room. In the third film, Austin kicks Mini-Me into a hotel mini-bar. The men threaten one another with bottles – Austin’s a regular-sized one, Mini-Me’s a miniature – before Austin catches him in a pillow case and smashes it against tables, walls and cabinets. Later, the character becomes Austin’s own sidekick, dressing correspondingly in blue velvet suit, frilly shirt and Harry Palmer specs, and passing lewd Post-it notes to Beyoncé Knowles.

Born and brought up in Centreville, Michigan, Verne was the son of Reuben and Susan, who were both factory workers. They were average-sized, and when Verne was young belonged to the Amish community: “They never treated me any different than my other average-sized siblings. I used to have to carry wood, feed the cows and pigs and farm animals.” The family also used a horse and buggy rather than a car, though borrowed an aunt’s when Verne had an infection and needed to be taken to hospital quickly, and left the religion while he was still a child.

He was working as a telephone customer service assistant when a friend put him in touch with the makers of Baby’s Day Out (1994), who were looking for a stand-in and stunt double. This led to roles in the simian-based romp Dunston Checks In (1996), the science-fiction comedy Men in Black (1997), Terry Gilliam’s adaptation of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1998) and How the Grinch Stole Christmas (2000). Troyer can also be seen in a Santa Claus costume fighting Arnold Schwarzenegger in Jingle All the Way (1996).

The popularity of the Austin Powers films, and Myers’s particular facility with comic language, ensured that the phrase “Mini-Me” entered common usage, just as “Not!”, “Schwing!” and “We’re not worthy!” from his Wayne’s World movie had done before.

This longevity guaranteed Troyer’s permanent association with the role while also restricting other casting possibilities. He played Griphook the goblin in Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (2001), but never found another part as memorable as Mini-Me. He starred in pop videos by Madonna, Moby and Ludacris. Though he had a speaking role as an ice-hockey coach in Myers’s The Love Guru (2008), that picture was a commercial and critical disaster. He was reunited with Gilliam on The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus (2009), the film on which Heath Ledger was working at the time of his death.

Troyer’s appearance in Werner Herzog’s My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done (2010), executive-produced by David Lynch, was “nonsensical” according to Variety magazine, and only one of the many bizarre elements in this tale of a man who slays his mother with a sword. He then starred in the unloved British TV comedy spin-off Keith Lemon: The Film (2012).

Troyer’s private life was marked by alcoholism, depression and occasional scandal; no cause for his death was announced immediately. His marriage to Genevieve Gowman, who modelled as Genevieve Gallen, was annulled in 2004. Four years later, he sued the celebrity site TMZ for disseminating a tape showing him having sex. Turns on reality TV shows, including Celebrity Big Brother, Celebrity Wife Swap and The Surreal Life (which he described as “garbage”) did little to boost his career or his spirits. His last role came in the as-yet-unreleased clowns-versus-aliens comedy Hipsters, Gangsters, Aliens and Geeks (2018).

Troyer was latterly seen most frequently on his own YouTube channel, which had half a million subscribers. He claimed never to have seen his size as any sort of impediment. “I don’t know what it’s like to be tall, so this is normal for me,” he told an interviewer in 2012. “It’s you guys who are abnormal.”

He is survived by his partner, Brittney Powell.

• Verne Troyer, actor, born 1 January 1969; died 21 April 2018