Bill Cobbs, the veteran character actor who turned a ubiquitous and sage display screen presence as an older man, has died. He was 90.
Cobbs died Tuesday at his residence within the Inland Empire, California, surrounded by household and associates, his publicist Chuck I. Jones stated. Natural causes is the probably reason behind loss of life, Jones stated.
A Cleveland native, Cobbs acted in such movies as “The Hudsucker Proxy,” “The Bodyguard” and “Night at the Museum.” He made his first big-screen look in a fleeting position in 1974’s “The Taking of Pelham One Two Three.” He turned a lifelong actor with some 200 movie and TV credit. The lion share of these got here in his 50s, 60s, and 70s, as filmmakers and TV producers turned to him many times to imbue small however pivotal components with a wizened and worn soulfulness.
Cobbs appeared on tv reveals together with “The Sopranos,” “The West Wing,” “Sesame Street” and “Good Times.” He was Whitney Houston’s manager in “The Bodyguard” (1992), the mystical clock man of the Coen brothers’ “The Hudsucker Proxy” (1994) and the doctor of John Sayles’ “Sunshine State” (2002). He played the coach in “Air Bud” (1997), the security guard in “Night at the Museum” (2006) and the father on “The Gregory Hines Show.”
Cobbs hardly ever received the sorts of main components that stand out and win awards. Instead, Cobbs was an acquainted and memorable everyman who left an impression on audiences, no matter display screen time. He gained a Daytime Emmy Award for excellent restricted efficiency in a daytime program for the sequence “Dino Dana” in 2020.
Wendell Pierce, who acted alongside Cobbs in “I’ll Fly Away” and “The Gregory Hines Show,” remembered Cobbs as “a father determine, a griot, an iconic artist that me by the best way he led his life as an actor,” he wrote on the social media platform X.
Wilbert Francisco Cobbs, born June 16, 1934, served eight years within the U.S. Air Force after graduating highschool in Cleveland. In the years after his service, Cobbs bought vehicles. One day, a buyer requested him if he wished to behave in a play. Cobbs first appeared on stage in 1969. He started to behave in Cleveland theater and later moved to New York the place he joined the Negro Ensemble Company, performing alongside Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee.
Cobbs later stated performing resonated with him as a strategy to categorical the human situation, particularly in the course of the Civil Rights Movement within the late ’60s.
“To be an artist, you have to have a sense of giving,” Cobbs stated in a 2004 interview. “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.”
© Copyright 2024 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This materials will not be revealed, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed with out permission.