A 'Memorable Everyman,' Dead at 90

Veteran film, TV character actor Bill Cobbs was in The Bodyguard, Night at the Museum, much more
By Newser Editors and Wire Services
Posted Jun 27, 2024 8:01 AM CDT
A 'Memorable Everyman,' Dead at 90
Bill Cobbs arrives at the premiere of "The Muppets" at El Capitan Theatre on Nov. 12, 2011, in Los Angeles.   (AP Photo/Katy Winn, File)

Bill Cobbs, the veteran character actor who became a ubiquitous and sage screen presence as an older man, has died at the age of 90. Cobbs died Tuesday at his home in the Inland Empire, California, surrounded by family and friends, his publicist said, adding that natural causes was the likely cause of death. A Cleveland native, the AP reports that Cobbs acted in such films as The Hudsucker Proxy, The Bodyguard, and Night at the Museum. He made his first big-screen appearance in a fleeting role in 1974's The Taking of Pelham One Two Three, then became a lifelong actor, with some 200 film and TV credits. The lion's share of those came in his 50s, 60s, and 70s, as filmmakers and TV producers turned to him again and again to imbue small but pivotal parts with a wizened and worn soulfulness.

Cobbs served eight years in the US Air Force, afterward selling cars. One day, a customer asked him if he wanted to act in a play. Cobbs began to act in Cleveland theater and later moved to New York, where he joined the Negro Ensemble Company, acting alongside Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee. Cobbs later said acting resonated with him as a way to express the human condition, in particular during the Civil Rights Movement in the late '60s. "To be an artist, you have to have a sense of giving," Cobbs said in 2004. "Art is somewhat of a prayer, isn't it? We respond to what we see around us and what we feel and how things affect us mentally and spiritually."

Cobbs rarely got the kinds of major parts that win awards. Instead, he was a familiar, memorable everyman who left an impression on audiences, regardless of screen time. Wendell Pierce, who acted with Cobbs in I'll Fly Away and The Gregory Hines Show, remembered Cobbs as "a father figure, a griot, an iconic artist, that mentored me by the way he led his life as an actor," he wrote on X.

(More character actor stories.)

Get the news faster.
Tap to install our app.
X
Install the Newser News app
in two easy steps:
1. Tap in your navigation bar.
2. Tap to Add to Home Screen.

X