Veteran movie and tv actor Fred Ward, 79, very best identified for enjoying gruff, tough-guy roles in films corresponding to “Tremors,” “Break out from Alcatraz,” and “The Proper Stuff,” died on Sunday, his publicist mentioned on Friday.
No motive or position of dying used to be launched, as in line with his circle of relatives’s needs, publicist Ron Hofmann mentioned.
Ward took a roundabout means into performing, after serving 3 years within the U.S. Air Pressure within the Sixties after which operating as an Alaskan lumberjack, a boxer the place his nostril used to be damaged thrice and a short-order cook dinner, consistent with a biography equipped via Hofmann.
His profession spanned greater than 4 a long time, beginning with overseas movies within the early Seventies and stretched via 2015 together with his ultimate function within the tv sequence “True Detective,” consistent with his on-line IMBD web page.
He made his first American movie look taking part in a cowboy within the 1975 movie, “Hearts of the West.” However his leap forward function got here when he performed reverse Clint Eastwood within the 1979 movie “Break out from Alcatraz.”
“The original factor about Fred Ward is that you just by no means knew the place he used to be going to pop up, so unpredictable had been his profession alternatives,” the discharge mentioned.
He performed the whole lot from an astronaut, cowboy, Vietnam battle soldier, a chain-smoking police detective-turned-assassin, to a hero struggling with large worms, the discharge mentioned.
In 1983 he portrayed Mercury 7 astronaut Virgil “Gus” Grissom within the adaptation of Tom Wolfe’s ebook, “The Proper Stuff.” That very same 12 months he seemed within the motion film “Unusual Valor” with Gene Hackman and within the drama “Silkwood” with Meryl Streep.
Ward received a Golden Globe and the Venice Movie Pageant ensemble prize for his efficiency in “Brief Cuts” in 1993, his biography mentioned.
He’s survived via his spouse of 27 years, Marie-France Ward, and a son, Django Ward.