STEPHEN FURST

(8 May 1954 - 16 June 2017)

The American actor-director (and sometime writer and producer) Stephen Furst has died aged 63. Once a pizza delivery boy in Hollywood, Furst put his photo and cv inside the pizza boxes and was thus discovered for a role in National Lampoon’s Animal House (1978). Television took up most of his time after that, alongside crazy and comic features or horror flicks. He was also in National Lampoon’s Class Reunion, an early screenplay by John Hughes who wrote the TV Delta House series in which Furst played Flounder, his character from Animal House. From 1983 onwards he appeared mainly on TV. Feature films, however, included The Dream Team, Little Bigfoot 2: The Journey Home, Deadly Delusions, Going Greek, Echoes of Enlightenment, Sorority Boys, Wild Roomies, Everything’s Jake and, his last film, Seven Days of Grace in 2006. As a director he was responsible for Magic Kid II, Stageghost, Game Day, Title to Murder, and episodes of Babylon 5, the TV series in which he played Vir Cotto over 100 times. Among his films as a producer were My Sister’s Keeper with Cameron Diaz and Abigail Breslin, Cold Moon, written and directed by his actor-director son Griff Furst, and Jack Snyder’s River Runs Red, a thriller due out in 2017. Stephen Furst and his wife Lorraine had another son, Nathan, a film composer.

MICHAEL DARVELL