Veteran movie and tv actor Fred Ward, 79, finest identified for taking part in gruff, tough-guy roles in motion pictures equivalent to Tremors, Escape from Alcatraz, and The Proper Stuff, died on Sunday, his publicist stated on Friday.
No trigger or place of demise was launched, as per his household’s needs, publicist Ron Hofmann stated.
Ward took a roundabout approach into performing, after serving three years within the U.S. Air Power within the Nineteen Sixties after which working as an Alaskan lumberjack, a boxer (the place his nostril was damaged thrice), and a short-order prepare dinner, in response to a biography offered by Hofmann.
His profession spanned greater than 4 many years, beginning with overseas movies within the early Seventies and stretched by way of 2015 together with his ultimate function within the tv collection True Detective, in response to his on-line IMBD web page.
He made his first U.S. movie look taking part in a cowboy within the 1975 movie, Hearts of the West. However his breakthrough function got here when he performed reverse Clint Eastwood within the 1979 movie Escape from Alcatraz.
“The distinctive factor about Fred Ward is that you just by no means knew the place he was going to pop up, so unpredictable have been his profession decisions,” the discharge stated.
He performed the whole lot from an astronaut, cowboy, Vietnam warfare soldier, a chain-smoking police detective-turned-assassin, to a hero battling large worms, the discharge stated.
In 1983 he portrayed Mercury 7 astronaut Virgil “Gus” Grissom within the adaptation of Tom Wolfe’s e-book, The Proper Stuff. That very same 12 months he appeared within the motion film Unusual Valor with Gene Hackman and within the drama Silkwood with Meryl Streep.
Ward received a Golden Globe and the Venice Movie Pageant ensemble prize for his efficiency in Quick Cuts in 1993, his biography stated.
He’s survived by his spouse of 27 years, Marie-France Ward, and a son, Django Ward.
