‘Candyman’ & ‘The Crow’ Actor With Hundreds Of Credits Was 69

Tony Todd, an actor who performed the killer in Candyman and its 2021 sequel and appeared within the Closing Vacation spot franchise and Platoon amongst greater than 240 movie and TV credit spanning 40 years, died November 6 at his house in Los Angeles. He was 69.

His reps confirmed the information to Deadline however didn’t present a explanation for loss of life.

Born on December 4, 1954, in Washington, D.C., Todd pursued appearing on the Eugene O’Neill Nationwide Actors Theatre Institute and Trinity Rep Conservatory, the place he honed his expertise and developed his commanding model. Amongst his first display screen roles was enjoying the heroin-addicted Sergeant Warren in Oliver Stone’s Finest Image Oscar-winning Vietnam Struggle basic Platoon.

Todd went on to visitor on such common Nineteen Eighties and ’90s collection as 21 Leap Road, Evening Courtroom, MacGyver, Matlock, Jake and the Fatman, Legislation & Order, The X-Information, NYPD Blue, Beverly Hills 90210, Xena: Warrior Princesss and Homicide, She Wrote and Star Trek: The Subsequent Technology, 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.

All of the whereas, Todd continued to behave for the large display screen. He appeared in Nineteen Eighties dramas Lean on Me, Colours and Charlie Parker biopic Chicken, 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 Useless as Ben, the position performed by Duane Jones in George A. Romero’s iconic 1968 unique. His subsequent huge position 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.

Candyman within the 1992 movie was the ghost of Daniel Robitaille, whose mother and father had been enslaved within the 1800s and have become an achieved painter. However finally he fell for a white lady whose enraged father despatched a lynch mob to kill him. Robitaille was burned on a spot the place a public housing venture 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 a lot of horror roles for Todd that may proceed all through his 40-year profession, together with enjoying funeral house proprietor William Bludworth in Closing Vacation spot and a number of sequels. He additionally performed Grange, the right-hand man of Prime Greenback (Michael Wincott) in 1994’s The Crow starring Brandon Lee.

“You gotta have viewers sympathy for the character not directly or one other,” Todd advised Deadline in a 2022 interview. “There’s gotta be one thing enticing concerning the character that makes folks need 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 Useless of Summer season 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 Responsibility video games to TV’s Transformers Prime and Be Cool, Scooby-Doo and such movies as Transformers: Rise of the Fallen.

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Possessed of a heat chortle and beneficiant spirit that belied his hulking look, Todd continued to work into this 12 months together with Stream and a lead position in The Bunker — one among greater than a dozen up upcoming credit, per IMDb. He appeared in final 12 months’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 in the course of the 2000s and appeared as himself in dozens of largely horror-themed documentaries and docuseries.

Data on survivors was incomplete.