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Brian Dennehy, a flexible stage and movie actor known for action movies, comedies and classics, but especially for his Tony Award-winning performances. Imposing, barrel-chested and sometimes silver-haired Brian Dennehy was a prolific US actor, well respected on both screen and stage over many decades. He was primarily known as a dramatic actor and did over 180 roles including films and television series.

He was born on July 9th, 1938 in Bridgeport, CT, and attended Columbia University in New York City on a football scholarship. Mr. Dennehy, who said he had struggled academically, left school to hitch the Marines, serving within the us ,

South Korea and Japan while he and his first wife, Judith Scheff, had two children. After leaving the service he completed his bachelor’s degree at Columbia in 1965 while working variously as a cabdriver, trucker, butcher, bartender and motel clerk to support his family. Brian majored in history, before moving on to Yale to study dramatic arts.

Staring his career by acting in regional theatre he first appeared in minor screen roles in such fare as Looking for Mr. Goodbar (1977), Semi-Tough (1977) and evil (1978) and proved fashionable casting directors, resulting in regular work. Mr. Dennehy was often called on to play an Everyman or an authority figure: athletes, sheriffs, bartenders, salesmen and fathers. However, he really got himself noticed by movie audiences within the box-office hit First Blood (1982) because the bigoted sheriff determined to run Vietnam veteran “John Rambo” (played by Sylvester Stallone) out of his town.

(Sylvester Stallone and Brian Dennehy in First Blood 1982)

Career

“He was a towering, fearless actor taking over the best dramatic roles of the 20th century,” Robert Falls, artistic director of the Goodman Theater in Chicago, where Mr. Dennehy did some of his finest work, said in a phone interview. Mr. Dennehy, who once played college football, thrived on roles that let him contrast his physical presence with an emotional vulnerability.

Dennehy quickly escalated to stronger supporting or co-starring roles in films including the conflict thriller Gorky Park (1983), as a benevolent alien in Cocoon (1985). In 1987, Dennehy turned in one of his finest performances as cancer-ridden architect “Stourley Kracklite” in Peter Greenaway’s superb The belly of an Architect (1987), for which he won the Best Actor Award at the 1987 Chicago festival . More strong performances followed.

He reprised prior roles for Cocoon: The return (1988) and F/FX 2 (1991), and turned in gripping performances in three made-for-TV films. In 1993, Dennehy appeared within the role of police “Sgt. Jack Reed” within the Jack Reed: Badge of Honour (1993), and reprised the role in four sequels, which saw him for the primary time get entangled in co-producing, directing and writing screen productions!

Demand for his services showed no signs of abating, and he put in further memorable performances in Romeo + Juliet (1996), as bad-luck-ridden “Willy Loman” in Death of a Salesman (2000) (which earned him a Golden Globe Award), he popped up within the uneven Lee film She Hate Me (2004) and appears within the remake Assault on Precinct 13 (2005).

He worked alongside Hollywood’s most popular and successful actors Robert de Niro and Al Pacino in the movie Righteous Kill (2008). The multi-talented Dennehy also had an upscale theatrical career and appeared both within the us and internationally in dynamic stage productions including “Death of a Salesman” (for which he picked up the 1999 Best Actor Tony Award and a Drama Desk Award), “A Touch of the Poet”, “Long Day’s Journey into Night” (for which he picked up another Tony Award in 2003).

(Brian Dennehy as “Willy Loman” in Death of a Salesman)

Family

Brian Dennehy’s mother was Hannah (Manion), a nurse, and father was Edward Dennehy, a wire service editor for the Associated press. He had two brothers, Michael and Edward. He was of Irish ancestry and was raised Catholic.

Dennehy married for the primary time while within the Marines within the early 1960s. Before he finished college he and his first wife had three daughters. Two of them became actresses, including Elizabeth Dennehy. After his first marriage led to divorce in 1987, he married Jennifer Arnott, an Australian, in 1988, and that they had two children, a boy and a woman .

Death

Dennehy died on Wednesday April 15, 2020, in New Haven, Connecticut,He was 81. His agency, ICM Partners, announced his death. His agent, Brian Mann, told The Chicago Tribune that the cause was asystole resulting from sepsis. Mr. Dennehy lived in Connecticut, where he was born.

Brian Dennehy Tv Series/Shows

Brian Dennehy Films

Brian Dennehy TV Movies

Television series

Brian Dennehy Awards

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