NED BEATTY

(6 July 1937 - 13 June 2021)

The American actor Ned Beatty, who has died of natural causes at the age of 83, became a star in his first film, John Boorman’s Deliverance in 1972. Screenwriter James Dickey based the script on his own novel about a group of businessmen out for an adventure, canoeing down a remote river in the Georgia wilderness. However, they fall foul of some backwoodsmen who suddenly appear out of nowhere and start a row. One of the party, Bobby (Beatty), gets raped by one of the mountain men and Ed (Jon Voight) gets tied to a tree just as Lewis (Burt Reynolds) kills the rapist. And that’s where the story really starts... It was a great critical and box-office success, securing three Academy Award nominations and five Golden Globe nominations and the music, ‘Duelling Banjos’, was also a hit. Beatty went on to have a successful film and TV career in such movies as John Huston’s The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean, Lamont Johnson’s The Last American Hero and, in particular, Robert Altman’s Nashville, Alan J. Pakula’s All the President’s Men and Sidney Lumet’s Network, for the last of which Beatty was Oscar-nominated. He continued to appear in popular genre pictures – Silver Streak, Exorcist II: the Heretic, Mikey and Nicky etc, and played Otis Berg in Superman and Superman II. Basically Ned Beatty was a character actor from the ‘heavy’ school, but he had the knack or the good fortune of being able to take over a scene because he had a certain friendly quality which drew an audience to him, and he was equally at home in light comedy or stark drama. He had started performing at the age of ten by singing in gospel choirs and barbershop quartets. Later on he worked on stage in Abingdon Virginia, Erie Pennsylvania, Houston Texas, Los Angeles and ultimately on Broadway in The Great White Hope. He also regularly appeared on television in M*A*S*H, Hawaii Five-0, The Rockford Files, The Streets of San Francisco, Szysznyk (in the title role), Roseanne and The Last Days of Pompeii, among many others. He also appeared in films such as Huston’s Wise Blood, Spielberg’s 1941, Ronald Neame’s Hopscotch, Ted Kotcheff’s Switching Channels (a version of Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur’s The Front Page), Peter Chelsom’s Hear My Song (as singer Josef Locke), Mike Nichols’ Charlie Wilson’s War, and he was the voice of Lotso in Toy Story 3. In all, Ned Beatty made over 160 film and TV appearances across fifty years. He was married four times: to Walta Drummond Chandler, the actress Belinda Rowley, the writer-producer Tinker Lindsay, and Sandra Johnson. He was the father of eight children.

MICHAEL DARVELL