HARRY DEAN STANTON

(14 July 1926 - 15 September 2017)

The American actor, musician and singer (he had a mariachi band) Harry Dean Stanton, who has died of natural causes at the age of 91, was kept busy in films and on television for well over sixty years, making over 300 appearances. He had a weirdly rugged look about him so was probably born to play odd character roles and, in the process upstaged many a star performance. On television from 1954 his first credited role was in the B-western Mark of the Apache (1957), which was followed by more TV work, then Michael Curtiz’s The Proud Rebel, with Alan Ladd, Hero’s Island with James Mason, and an uncredited role in How the West Was Won. In 1967 he was again uncredited for In the Heat of the Night, but then came Cool Hand Luke with Paul Newman. More films followed as well as TV work and Stanton then made more of a mark in such films as Kelly’s Heroes, Two-Lane Blacktop, Cisco Pike, Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, Dillinger, The Godfather Part II, Farewell, My Lovely (1975), The Missouri Breaks and Wise Blood among others. He was in Alien, The Rose, Private Benjamin, Escape from New York, One From the Heart, Christine and, more famously, Repo Man and Paris, Texas. After playing Molly Ringwald’s father in Pretty in Pink he did Stars and Bars, Mr North, The Last Temptation of Christ (as St Paul), Twister, Wild at Heart, Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me, and continued to work on such films as Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, The Straight Story, The Green Mile, The Big Bounce, Avengers Assemble etc. He made four films in 2017 including John Carroll Lynch’s Lucky, in which he plays the central role of a 90-year-old atheist on a journey of self-exploration, and the new TV series of Twin Peaks. His last film, Frank and Ava, about Sinatra and Gardner, is in post production.

MICHAEL DARVELL