Character actor appeared in ‘ Alien,’ ‘ The Godfather Part II,’ ‘ Paris, Texas’
LOS ANGELES — Harry Dean Stanton, the shambling, craggy face character actor with the deadpan voice who became a cult favorite through his memorable turns in “Paris, Texas,” “Repo Man” and many other films and TV shows, died Friday at age 91.
Mr. Stanton died of natural causes at Cedars- Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, his agent, John S. Kelly, told The Associated Press. Kelly gave no further details on the cause.
Never mistaken for a leading man, Mr. Stanton was an unforgettable presence to moviegoers, fellow actors and directors, who recognized that his quirky characterizations could lift even the most ordinary script. Roger Ebert once observed that no movie with Mr. Stanton in a supporting role “can be altogether bad.”
He was widely loved around Hollywood, a drinker and smoker and straight talker with a million stories who palled around with Jack Nicholson and Kris Kristofferson among others and was a hero to such younger stars and brothers- in- partying as Rob Lowe and Emilio Estevez. “I don’t act like their father, I act like their friend,” he once told New York magazine.
Nicholson so liked Mr. Stanton’s name that he would find a way to work his initials, HDS, into a camera shot.
Almost always cast as a crook, a codger, an eccentric or a loser, he appeared in more than 200 movies and TV shows in a career dating to the mid- 1950s. A cult- favorite since the ’ 70s with roles in “Cockfighter,” “Two- Lane Blacktop” and “Cisco Pike,” his more famous credits ranged from the Oscarwinning epic “The Godfather Part II” to the sci- fi classic “Alien” to the teen flick “Pretty in Pink,” in which he played Molly Ringwald’s father. He also guest starred on such TV shows as “Laverne & Shirley,” “Adam- 12” and “Gunsmoke.” He had a cameo on “Two and a Half Men,” which featured “Pretty in Pink” star Jon Cryer, and appeared in such movies as “The Avengers” and “The Last Stand.”
While fringe roles and films were a specialty, he also ended up in the work of many of the 20th century’s master auteurs, even Alfred Hitchcock in the director’s serial TV show.
“I worked with the best directors,” Mr. Stanton told the AP in a 2013 interview. He said he could have been a director himself but “it was too much work.”
Fitting for a character actor, he only became famous in late middle age. In Wim Wenders’ 1984 rural drama “Paris, Texas,” he earned acclaim for his subtle and affecting portrayal of a man so deeply haunted by something in his past that he abandons his young son and society to wander silently in the desert.
The film won the grand prize at the Cannes Film Festival and provided the actor with his first star billing, at age 58.
“Repo Man,” released that same year, became another signature film: Mr. Stanton starred as the world- weary boss of an auto repossession firm who instructs Estevez in the tricks of the hazardous trade.
Mr. Stanton, who early in his career used the name Dean Stanton to avoid confusion with another actor, grew up in West Irvine, Kentucky and said he began singing when he was a year old.
Later, he used music as an escape from his parents’ quarreling and the sometimes brutal treatment he was subjected to by his father. As an adult, he fronted his own band for years, playing western, Mexican, rock and pop standards in small venues around Los Angeles’ San Fernando Valley.
After Navy service in the Pacific during World War II, he spent three years at the University of Kentucky and appeared in several plays. Determined to make it in Hollywood, he picked tobacco to earn his fare west.
Three years at the Pasadena Playhouse prepared him for television and movies.
For decades Stanton lived in a small, disheveled house overlooking the San Fernando Valley, and was a fixture at the West Hollywood landmark Dan Tana’s. He was attacked in his home in 1996 by two robbers who forced their way in, tied him up at gunpoint, beat him, ransacked the house and fled in his Lexus. He was not seriously hurt, and the two, who were captured, were sentenced to prison.
Mr. Stanton never married, although he had a long relationship with actress Rebecca DeMornay, 35 years his junior. “She left me for Tom Cruise,” Mr. Stanton said often.
“I might have had two or three ( kids) out of marriage,” he once recalled. “But that’s another story.”