Actor, comedian Fred Willard, 86

Fred Willard, the comic actor known for his genial but dunderheaded characters, has died. He was 86. The Los Angeles Times reported Willard died Friday evening in Los Angeles of natural causes at 86, quoting his agent Mike Eisenstadt.

Though most sources reported that he was born in 1939, some asserted that he was actually six years older, with a 1933 birthdate.

Willard was an astonishingly ubiquitous presence especially on TV but also in movies for decades, though almost always in small but memorable roles.

The New York Times said in 2008: “He has become the king of the deadpan cameo, the guy who makes a one-shot appearance as an office manager or furniture salesman and ends up stealing the scene.”

Willard was nominated four times for Emmy Awards, three of them (in 2003, 2004 and 2005) for playing Hank on “Everybody Loves Raymond” and the fourth in 2010 for his recurring role as Frank Dunphy, the father of Ty Burrell’s Phil Dunphy, on “Modern Family.”

In 2015 he won a Daytime Emmy for a story arc as John Forrester on “The Bold and the Beautiful”; he had previously been nominated in 1986 for outstanding talk or service show host for “What’s Hot, What’s Not.”

The actor was long associated with improvisational comedy, going back to his days at Chicago’s Second City in the 1960s and continuing with his small role in Rob Reiner’s documentary-style “This Is Spinal Tap” – in 2015, Harry Shearer declared of Willard’s work on the film: “He’s from another galaxy; you just can’t fathom where this stuff comes from. His energy is overpowering” – and the Christopher Guest-directed comedic mockumentaries “Waiting for Guffman” (1996), “Best in Show” (2000), “A Mighty Wind” (2003), “For Your Consideration” (2006) and 2016’s “Mascots,” in which a great deal of improvisation was utilized.

The Detroit Free Press opined in 2014: “‘Best in Show,’ with Willard playing a color commentator at a prestigious dog competition, is perhaps the best-loved” in this string of cult hits. The New York Times said that to play the “blissfully ill-informed dog show television announcer in ‘Best in Show,’” Willard “trotted out every inappropriate dog joke and announcing cliché he could muster, drawing rave reviews and reinvigorating his career.” The role “brought a cachet, buoyed by the YouTube and Nick at Night reruns of his old ‘Fernwood Tonight’ appearances.