Veteran Actor Brian Dennehy, First Blood & Cocoon Star, Dies At 81
Brian Dennehy, the Golden Globe-winning actor whose career in movies, TV and the stage spanned nearly half a century, has died. He was 81.
The actor died Wednesday of natural causes at his home in New Haven, Connecticut.
Instantly recognizable for the past four decades, Dennehy broke out with his role as a small-town sheriff who hassles John Rambo (Sylvester Stallone) in the 1982 actioner First Blood. The lawman pushes the wandering Vietnam vet too far and gets much more than he bargained for. He first teamed with Stallone in the 1978 labor-union drama F.I.S.T.
He went on to appear in such varied films as Gorky Park (1983), Cocoon (1985), Silverado (1985), F/X (1986), Presumed Innocent (1990), Tommy Boy (1995), Romeo + Juliet (1996), and most recently 3 Days with Dad (2019). He also voiced Django, the father of Remy in Pixar’s animation Ratatouille (2007).
Dennehy won Golden Globe and SAG awards and scored an Emmy nomination for his lead role as Willy Loman in the 2001 miniseries Death of a Salesman. Dennehy had won also two Tony Awards, one for Death of a Salesman, and one for playing James Tyrone in Long Day’s Journey Into Night in 2003.