Ned Beatty, a supporting actor whose hundreds of film and stage roles spanned the full spectrum of humanity – from sincerity to villainy, buffoon to tragedy – and made him one of the most eclectic actors of his generation, has died at the age of 83.
In a career spanning six decades, Beatty has put his boomy voice, over-the-top physique, sparkling eyes, and grin of the Cheshire Cat together into an impressive range of characters: amiable, self-deceptive, threatening, scared, or a nuanced combination of the four .
After years of theater work – including eight seasons at the Arena Stage in Washington – Beatty developed into a popular supporting actor on screen in his mid-30s. He made his film debut in Deliverance (1972), about a quartet of Atlanta businessmen (Burt Reynolds, Jon Voight and Ronny Cox were the others) whose canoeing adventure in the Appalachians turns into a gruesome tale of rape and murder.
He later played southerners of various stripes, including a racist sheriff in White Lightning (1973), a country singer in WW and the Dixie Dancekings (1975), and a fried chicken magnate in Stroker Ace (1983), all with friend Reynolds; and an unsavory promoter in Robert Altman’s acclaimed drama Nashville (1975).
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In brief appearances, Beatty was a clumsy atomic bus technician in the disaster parody The Big Bus (1976); a rowdy traveling salesman (who picks up a bucket of ice cubes with the kind permission of Jill Clayburgh) in Silver Streak (1976); and Florida investigator Martin Dardis in All the President’s Men (1976) about Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein (played by Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman) who uncovered the Watergate scandal.
One of his most memorable moments on screen came in Network (1976), a caustic satire of media and modern culture in which Beatty’s mighty TV executive Arthur Jensen preached a fiery sermon on global capitalism.
Horrible debut: in “Deliverance” with Bill McKinney, Jon Voight, Ned Beatty, Burt Reynolds and Ronny Cox from left
(Filmladen / Shutterstock)
“You’ve interfered with the elemental forces of nature, Mr. Beale,” Jensen railed against deranged news anchor Howard Beale (Peter Finch), whose on-air talk has raised questions about a shady deal with the conglomerate that owns the network .
Beatty received an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor, but lost to Jason Robards, who played Post editor Ben Bradlee in All the President’s Men. Beatty later told People magazine that he was just grateful for the chance to play a die-hard businessman after a string of south-fried “schnooks”.
“If I had cast this role,” he said of Jensen on Network, “I would be the last person I would have thought of. Basically, I look like a used car dealer. “
Over the years Beatty provided the much-needed ballast for dozens of light films. He was the unsuspecting henchman Otis of Gene Hackman’s Lex Luthor in Superman (1978) and its 1980 sequel, an ex-priest in Exorcist II: The Heretic (1977), an oily college dean (Dean Martin) in the Rodney Dangerfield Comedy Back To School (1986) and a corrupt police captain in The Big Easy (1986) starring Dennis Quaid.
New York film critic Pauline Kael marveled at Beatty’s “wonderfully piggy” twist as a corrupt prosecutor in the otherwise pale romantic comedy Switching Channels (1988) starring Reynolds, Kathleen Turner and Christopher Reeve.
“Stars never want to throw a curveball for the audience,” Beatty once told the New York Times, “but I really enjoy throwing curveballs. Being a star limits your effectiveness as an actor because you become an identifiable part of a product and something predictable. You need to take care of your PS and Qs and take care of your fans. But I like to surprise the audience, to do the unexpected. “
Ned Thomas Beatty was born July 6, 1937 in Louisville, Kentucky, and grew up in nearby St. Matthews, where his mother worked in the high school cafeteria. He was 15 years old when his father, a filtration products salesman, died.
He helped support his family by singing at weddings and other events. He received a music scholarship from Transylvania University, a Disciples of Christ School in Lexington, and considered becoming a pastor before he felt a more secular calling – the theater. “Most preachers are frustrated actors,” he told People magazine, “and most actors are frustrated preachers.”
For much of his youth, he said, his volume and stentorical voice made him a natural fit for older characters like Anton Chekhov’s uncle Vanya and Arthur Miller’s Willy Loman, and earned him steady work at regional theaters like the Barter in Abingdon for 13 seasons , Arena Stage and the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles.
“I look like a used car dealer”: Beatty in “Superman – The Movie”, 1978
(Warner Bros / Shutterstock)
In 1991 Beatty had a rare lead role on screen, playing Irish tenor Josef Locke in Hear My Song. (His vocals were dubbed by Vernon Midgley.) He kept up his frantic pace with small roles, such as steelworking father to aspiring Notre Dame football player in Rudy (1993) and longtime Maryland congressman Clarence “Doc” Long in Charlie Wilsons in war (2007). In Toy Story 3 (2010) he provided the voice of the bad bear Lotso.
“One reason I work so much is because I do a lot of what I call mortar acting,” he told the Times. “That is, in the cracks of the film … When I play one of those mortar pieces, I pretend that the film is about that character and not about the stars.”
Beatty was equally prolific in television films, receiving two Emmy nominations: one for Friendly Fire (1979), in which he played the sad father of a soldier who was accidentally killed during the Vietnam War; and another for Last Train Home (1989), as the builder of a Canadian transcontinental railroad.
In addition to guest roles in shows such as The Rockford Files and M * A * S * H, he starred in the short-lived sitcom Szysznyk (1977-1978) as an ex-Marine who worked with youth from downtown Washington; and made recurring appearances on the sitcom Roseanne, as the father of John Goodman’s Dan Conner.
In 2003, he returned to his stage roots as the terminally ill Southern patriarch and vulgar Big Daddy in a Broadway revival of Tennessee Williams’ Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, in which he won a Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Actor in a Play. The New York Times theater critic, Ben Brantley, wrote that Beatty “delivered a mature character study that could easily hold its own as a leading actor.”
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During production, Beatty drew the ire of critically drunk co-stars Ashley Judd and Jason Patric for saying they were beautiful Hollywood stars on stage. Judd, he told the Times, was “a darling and yet she doesn’t have many tools”. He said of Patric: “He’s got better and better, but his journey is different.” (He later apologized and said he was exhausted from 11 shows in a week.)
His marriages to Walta Chandler, actress Belinda Rowley and Dorothy “Tinker” Lindsay ended in divorce. In 1999 he married Sandra Johnson, who came from Norway. In addition to his wife, the survivors include four children from his first marriage; two children from his second marriage; and two children from his third marriage; and several grandchildren.
“I have eight children! That’s my excuse for everything, ”Beatty told the New York Observer of an amazing career where prestige was seldom a priority and work alone counted. “I got this call and they tell me it’s a small independent business with no money, but it’s shooting in Minnesota and it’s about early Norwegian immigrants,” he said. “I said, ‘Okay, you have me!’ Because I live in Minnesota and my wife is a Norwegian immigrant. ‘ What should I say – no? “
Ned Beatty, actor, born July 6, 1937, died June 13, 2021
The Washington Post