Celebrity Biographies
Brian dennehy
He excelled as a cop, in “Cornered” and “FX-Deadly Effects,” throughout his long career. Brian Dennehy died on April 15, 2020 at a hospital in New Haven, Connecticut, at the age of 81, according to Elizabeth Denney, one of his daughters. “It is with a heavy heart that we announce that our father, Brian, passed away last night of natural causes. Larger than life, generous, a proud and devoted father and grandfather, he will be missed by his wife Jennifer, family and many friends.”
Born in Bridgeport, Connecticut, on July 9, 1938, Brian Manion Dennehy was of Irish descent and received a Catholic upbringing. His family moved to Long Island, New York, where he attended Chaminade High School. After getting a scholarship for his soccer skills, he studied history at Columbia University. Before turning to acting, he served a stint as a Marine and worked as a stockbroker in Manhattan.
His career started in the 70s with films with a certain creative risk such as Looking for Mr. Goodbar , alongside Diane Keaton . He became popular as the ruthless, relentless sheriff to John Rambo in Cornered , starring Sylvester Stallone in 1982 . He was another relentless servant of the law in FX’s Deadly Effects , where he was a cop investigating a faked murder of a mobster, staged by a clever special effects technician.
Brian Dennehy also participated in titles like Dangerously Together , the western Silverado or The Architect’s Belly , by Peter Greenaway , of which he felt more proud than his more commercial films. “I’ve done a lot of movies, but this is my first movie,” he explained. He excelled as Walter, leader of the elders in Cocoon , and as the attorney general, in Presumed Innocent . He shared the lead with Robert Duvall in Fortune Road , produced by Clint Eastwood . .
Parallel to his career in the cinema, he lavished himself in the theater. He won two Tony Awards, the most important in the North American scene, as Best Actor, in 1999 for a production of “Death of a Salesman”, by Arthur Miller , and in 2003 for “Long Journey Into Night”, by Eugene O’ Neil. Divorciado en 1974 de Judith Scheff, con la que tuvo dos hijos, se unió a Jennifer Arnott, con quien adoptó a otros dos retoños. Esta última le ha acompañado hasta el final.
In an interview he recognized that he had had problems with alcoholism, but managed to overcome them. “For a long time I was a functional alcoholic,” she explained. “It never got in the way of my work, but it affected my relationships. I’ve never killed anyone, but I’ve made a number of people unhappy, including myself, and others who are extremely important to me, like my children.”
The actor continued to work until his last years of life, for example in the series The Blacklist , where he played a former agent of the Soviet KGB. At the time of his death, Brian Dennehy left several projects pending release, such as The Last Journey , where he headlined with Danny Glover .