Robert Swan, the veteran character actor who appeared in key roles in notable sports movies. socks, rudy and The baby, has died. She was 78 years old.
Swan died Wednesday after a long battle with cancer at her home in Rolling Prairie, Indiana, her friend Betty Hoeffner said. the hollywood reporter.
Swan also played a Canadian trooper in the Brian De Palma film. The Untouchables (1987) and a bloody deputy at Oliver Stone’s Natural Born Killers (1994) and was another representative of the law in Who’s that Girl (1987) and more pasta (1992).
In socks (1986), his character, Indiana farmer Rollin Butcher, has two sons on the Hickory High School basketball team and is one of the few people in town to welcome new coach Norman Dale (Gene Hackman). . Later, he joins Coach Dale on the bench as an assistant for the Huskers.
Swan then met with socks director David Anspaugh to play a priest in another classic underdog sports movie, rudy (1993), starring Sean Astin.
In between those movies, he was the father of New York Yankees slugger George Herman Ruth in the Arthur Hiller film. The baby (1992), starring John Goodman.
Born in Chicago on October 20, 1944, Swan sang at the Church of St. Paul & the Redeemer in Hyde Park as a youth and with the choir at the Lyric Opera and Chicago Symphony. He also acted in theaters in the city and came to Broadway in 1974 in freedom of the city.
In his first movie, Some place in time (1980), he played a stagehand struggling with Christopher Reeve’s character in the year 1912.
His resume on the big screen also included Take this job and keep it (1981), detroit doctor (1983) by Randal Kleiser Grandview, United States (1984), That was then, this is now (1985), Costa Gavras’ betrayed (1988) and Ron Howard countercurrent (1991).
On television, Swan starred opposite Jane Fonda in the 1984 ABC telefilm. the doll makerbased on the novel by Harriette Arnow and directed by Daniel Petrie, and appeared in All my kids — as bad boy Jeb Tidwell — rental spenser and the equalizer.
He was also a voice actor in commercials for United Airlines, Busch and Schlitz beer, Nine Lives cat food, and Beef Industry Council, and founded and performed at Harbor County Opera in Three Oaks, Michigan.
Survivors include his wife, Barbara; brothers David and Charles; sister-in-law Elizabeth; nephews Christopher, Bryan and Daniel; and the dogs Baci and Chico.
Swan had written and was buying a script, The saint and the scoundrelabout Samuel Johnson, the English lexicographer who published A dictionary of the English language in 1755 and suffered from Tourette’s syndrome.
A celebration of life at a date to be announced will feature a script reading with Hill Street Sadness stars Daniel J. Travanti as Johnson, Si Osborne as his biographer, and an actor to be named as the narrator, a role Swan dreamed of playing.