The adaptable entertainer, whose vocation crossed over 50 years in theater, films and TV, won two Tony Awards, incorporating for his presentation in "Death of a Salesman."
Brian Dennehy, a flexible on-screen character known for his work on film and the stage, spreading over 50 years, activity motion pictures, comedies and Shakespeare, passed on Wednesday. He was 81.
Mr. Dennehy kicked the bucket in New Haven, Conn., with his significant other, Jennifer, and child, Cormac, close by, as indicated by an announcement from a representative for ICM Partners, the organization that spoke to him.
Over his five-decade profession, Mr. Dennehy won two Tony Awards. His previously came in 1999 for best entertainer in "Death of a Salesman" and he earned his second in 2003 for best on-screen character in Eugene O'Neill's "Taxing Day's Journey into Night." Mr. Dennehy additionally got a Laurence Olivier Award, a Golden Globe and a SAG Award, and he got six Primetime Emmy Award selections. He was additionally enlisted into American Theater Hall of Fame in 2011.
Beefy and gregarious, Mr. Dennehy was regularly approached to play an everyman or a position figure: competitors and sheriffs, barkeeps, sales reps and fathers. He came back to the stage over and over, performing plays by Samuel Beckett and Anton Chekhov.
He was most likely most popular for his noticeable jobs in blockbuster films, including "First Blood" (1982) as the sheriff who imprisoned Rambo, played by Sylvester Stallone. Mr. Dennehy additionally played Big Tom in the 1995 film "Tommy Boy," featuring Chris Farley, and Ted Montague the next year in "Romeo + Juliet." Years after the fact, he played a better official than Robert De Niro and Al Pacino in the 2008 dramatization "Honest Kill," and played Russell Crowe's dad in the 2018 film "The Next Three Days."
Mr. Dennehy was conceived on July 9, 1938, Bridgeport, Conn., to Hannah Manion Dennehy and Edward J. Dennehy, both of Derby, Conn. He was brought to a great extent up in New York. He came to acting late, revealing to The New York Times in 1989 that he had grown up "a major, absolutely clumsy, miserable football player" who wound up "sufficiently great to get a grant to Columbia."
Subsequent to serving in the Marines, he looked for some kind of employment driving a meat truck and doing whatever unspecialized temp jobs he could discover — a time of about 10 years that he later called "the most ideal apprenticeship" for being an entertainer.
"I learned firsthand how a truck driver lives, what a barkeep does, how a sales rep thinks," he said. "I needed to make an actual existence in those occupations, not simply imagine."
While shuffling day occupations, Mr. Dennehy figured out how to act in plays across Long Island. He in the end quit those occupations and moved to Los Angeles to seek after acting at 38: His first film job was as a football player in "Semi-Tough," for which he was paid $1,000 per week for 10 weeks. He said his solitary objective at the time was to bring in enough cash to set up his youngsters for school. "They had made such a large number of penances throughout the years," he said.
Mr. Dennehy is made due by his better half, Jennifer Arnott; their little girls, Elizabeth, Kathleen and Deirdre; and grandkids.