Brian Dennehy, two-time Tony winner and 'First Blood' and 'Silverado' star, dies at 81.
FILE - In this June 6, 1999 file photo, actor Brian Dennehy, left, applauds playwright, Arthur Miller, before awarding him the Lifetime Achievement Award at the Tony Awards in New York. Dennehy, the burly actor who started in films and later in his career won plaudits for his stage work in plays, died of natural causes on Wednesday, April 15, 2020 in New Haven, Conn. He was 81.
Known for his broad frame, booming voice and ability to play good guys and bad guys with equal aplomb, Dennehy won two Tony Awards, a Golden Globe and was nominated for six Emmys. He was inducted into the American Theater Hall of Fame in 2010. Eventually Dennehy wearied of the studio life. “Movies used to be fun,” he observed in an interview. “They took care of you, first-class. Those days are gone.”
“What this actor goes for is close to an everyman quality, with a grand emotional expansiveness that matches his monumental physique,” wrote Ben Brantley in his review of the play for The New York Times. “Yet these emotions ring so unerringly true that Mr. Dennehy seems to kidnap you by force, trapping you inside Willy’s psyche.”
Back in New York City in 1965, he pursued acting while working at side jobs. “I learned first-hand how a truck driver lives, what a bartender does, how a salesman thinks,” he told The New York Times in 1989. “I had to make a life inside those jobs, not just pretend.” Among his films: “Looking for Mr. Goodbar,” “Foul Play,” “Little Miss Marker,” “Split Image,” “Gorky Park,” “Legal Eagles,” “Miles from Home,” “Return to Snowy River,” “Presumed Innocent,” “Romeo and Juliet” and “Assault on Precinct 13.” He played the father of Chris Farley’s titular character in the 1995 comedy “Tommy Boy.”
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