Death at the age of 81 of Brian Dennehy, actor winner of Tony, actor | Cinema

NEW YORK Brian Dennehy, the beefy actor who started in the movies as a heavy macho and later in his career won praise for his stage work in plays by William Shakespeare, Anton Chekhov, Eugene ONeill and Arthur Miller, is dead. He was 81 years old.

Dennehy died Wednesday night of natural causes in New Haven, Connecticut, according to Kate Cafaro of ICM Partners, the representatives of the actors.

Known for his broad frame, his booming voice and his ability to play good and bad with equal balance, Dennehy has won two Tony Awards, a Golden Globe, a Laurence Olivier Award and has been nominated for six Emmy Awards. He was inducted into the American Theater Hall of Fame in 2010.

Tributes have come from Hollywood and Broadway, including Lin-Manuel Miranda, who said he saw Dennehy twice on stage and called the actor a colossus. Actor Michael McKean said that Dennehy was brilliant and versatile, a powerful actor and a very kind man as well. Dana Delany, who appeared in a film with Dennehy, said: They no longer do their gender.

Among his 40 films, he played a sheriff who imprisoned Rambo in First Blood, a serial killer in To Catch a Killer, and a corrupt sheriff shot by Kevin Kline in Silverado. He also had benign roles: the bartender who consoles Dudley Moore in 10 and the leader of the extraterrestrials in Cocoon and its continuation.

The world has lost a great artist, wrote Sylvester Stallone in tribute on Twitter, saying that Dennehy had helped him build the character of Rambo.

Finally, Dennehy got tired of studio life. The movies were fun, he observed in an interview. They took care of you, first class. Those days are over.

Dennehy had a long relationship with the Chicagos Goodman Theater, which had a reputation for being a heavy drama. He appeared in Bertolt Brechts Galileo in 1986 and later in Chekhovs Cherry Orchard at much lower wages than he earned in Hollywood. In 1990, he starred as Hickey in Eugene ONeills The Iceman Cometh, a play he performed at Goodman with Nathan Lane in 2012 and in Brooklyn in 2015.

In 1998, Dennehy appeared on Broadway in the classic role of Willy Loman, the worn-out con artist in Millers Death of a Salesman, and won the Tony for his performance.

What this actor is looking for is close to everyone’s quality, with a great emotional range that matches his monumental physique, wrote Ben Brantley in his review of the play for The New York Times. Yet these emotions sound so infallible that Mr. Dennehy seems to forcefully kidnap you, trapping you in Willys’ psyche.

He received another Tony in 2003 for his role in ONeills Long Days Journey into Night, opposite Vanessa Redgrave, Phillip Seymour Hoffman and Robert Sean Leonard.

On the podium, after thanking his family, co-stars and producers and completing his competitors, he said: The words of Eugene ONeill have been heard. They must be heard, heard and heard. And thank you very much for giving us the chance to state them.

Dennehy was born July 9, 1938 in Bridgeport, Connecticut, the first of three sons. His adventure in theater started when he was 14 years old in New York and he was a student in a high school in Brooklyn. He played the title role in Macbeth. He played football on a Columbia University scholarship and served five years in the United States Marines.

Returning to New York in 1965, he continued his acting career while working in secondary jobs. I learned firsthand how a truck driver lives, what a bartender does, how a salesperson thinks, he told the New York Times in 1989. I had to make a living in these jobs, not just do pretend.

Her parents, Ed Dennehy, editor of the Associated Press in New York, and Hannah Dennehy, nurse, never understood why their son chose to act. Anyone who grew up in a first or second generation immigrant family knows that you are expected to move the ball on the field, Dennehy told Columbia College Today in 1999. The game was not not at all qualified.

The 6 foot 3 inch Dennehy went to Hollywood for his first film, Semi-Tough with Burt Reynolds and Kris Kristofferson. Dennehy was paid $ 10,000 a week for 10 weeks of work, which he said seemed to be all the money in the world. He became a professional actor at the age of 38.

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 the titular character of Chris Farleys in the comedy of 1995 Tommy Boy.

A year later, he played serial killer John Wayne Gacy in the TV movie To Catch a Killer and union leader Jackie Presser in 1991 in HBO’s special Teamster Boss. I try to play the bad guys like they are good guys and good guys like the bad guys he said in 1992

He worked deeply in his 70s, in projects such as SundanceTVs Hap and Leonard, the film The Seagull with Elisabeth Moss and Annette Bening and the play Endgame by Samuel Beckett at the Long Wharf Theater. Her last Broadway foray was in Love Letters opposite Mia Farrow in 2014.

Just devastated to learn that the magnificent Brian Dennehy has passed away. There is no one with whom I like to work more. And there are few such precious friends in my life, Farrow wrote on Thursday.

Treat Williams, who wrote: A great great actor has passed away, and Josh Gad, who said that Dennehys’ performance in Death of a Salesman will fall as one of the crowned performances ever delivered on stage.

He is survived by his second wife, costume designer Jennifer Arnott and their two children, Cormac and Sarah. He also leaves to mourn three daughters, Elizabeth, Kathleen and Deirdre, from a previous marriage to Judith Scheff.