Tony Todd, an actor who performed the killer in Candyman and its 2021 sequel and appeared in Platoon and The Crow amongst greater than 240 movie and TV credit spanning 40 years, died November 6 at his residence in Los Angeles. He was 69.
His reps confirmed the information to Deadline however didn’t present a reason for demise.
Tony Todd in ‘Platoon’
Tony Todd by way of Fb
Born on December 4, 1954, in Washington, D.C., Todd pursued performing on the Eugene O’Neill Nationwide Actors Theatre Institute and Trinity Rep Conservatory, the place he honed his expertise and developed his commanding fashion. Amongst his first display screen roles was enjoying the heroin-addicted Sergeant Warren in Oliver Stone’s Finest Image Oscar-winning Vietnam Struggle traditional Platoon.
Todd went on to visitor on such fashionable Eighties and ’90s collection as 21 Bounce Road, Evening Courtroom, MacGyver, Matlock, Jake and the Fatman, Regulation & Order, The X-Information, NYPD Blue, Beverly Hills 90210, Xena: Warrior Princesss and Homicide, She Wrote and Star Trek: The Subsequent Era, Deep Area 9 and Voyager. He additionally recurred as pesky TV information reporter Matt Rhodes on Murder: Life on the Road and as Gus Rogan in additional than a dozen 2013 episodes of The Younger and the Stressed.
Tony Todd, left, and Michael Dorn in ‘Star Trek: Deep Area 9’
, 1993-99. ph: Robbie RobinsParamount Tv/Everett Assortment
All of the whereas, Todd continued to behave for the massive display screen. He appeared in Eighties dramas Lean on Me, Colours and Charlie Parker biopic Chook, starring Forest Whitaker. However his best-known movie roles got here throughout the next decade.
The 6-foot-5 Todd starred within the 1990 remake Evening of the Residing Lifeless as Ben, the function performed by Duane Jones in George A. Romero’s iconic 1968 unique. His subsequent massive function doubtless is his most well-known — enjoying the legendary title creep with a hook for a hand in Candyman (1992) — a personality he reprised within the 2021 sequel of the identical identify.
Tony Todd, left, and Yahya Abdul-Mateen II in 2021’s ‘Candyman’
Common Photos/Everett Assortment
Candyman within the 1992 movie was the ghost of a Daniel Robitaille, whose mother and father had been enslaved within the 1800s and have become an completed painter. However finally he fell for a white girl whose enraged father despatched a lynch mob to kill him. Robitaille was burned on a spot the place a public housing mission later is constructed and the place a collection of unexplained murders happens.
The Candyman legend lived on within the 2021 sequel directed by Nia DaCosta. It was amongst quite a few horror roles for Todd that will proceed all through his 40-year profession.
“You gotta have viewers sympathy for the character ultimately or one other,” Todd advised Deadline in a 2022 interview. “There’s gotta be one thing engaging in regards to the character that makes folks wish to root for them however on the identical time really feel repulsed by the concept. And for me personally, for each movie that I do, I create a backstory for all my tortured folks and my heroes alike.”
Todd continued to work steadily in movie, TV and video video games all through the twenty first century, together with a recurring gig because the CIA director on NBC’s Chuck, Freeform’s Lifeless of Summer time and MTV/VH1’s Scream. His silver-screen roles primarily had been in B-movies.
He additionally was a sought-after voice actor, lending his wealthy and resonant pipes to dozens of roles starting from Star Trek and Name of Obligation video games to TV’s Transformers Prime and Be Cool, Scooby-Doo and such movies as Transformers: Rise of the Fallen and Remaining Vacation spot 3, by which he performed Devil.
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Tony Todd in 2017
Michael Tullberg/Getty Photographs
Possessed of a heat snort and beneficiant spirit that belied his hulking look, Todd continued to work into this yr together with Stream and a lead function in The Bunker — considered one of greater than a dozen up upcoming credit, per IMDb. He appeared in final yr’s Stream, Realm of Shadows and Werewolf Sport and within the 2022 SXSW-premiering Bitch Ass.
Todd additionally a couple of half-dozen small movies throughout the 2000s and appeared as himself in dozens of largely horror-themed documentaries and docuseries.
Info on survivors was incomplete.
