scott wilson

Born on March 29, 1942 in Atlanta, he was a prominent baseball player in his youth, for which he won a scholarship to study architecture at Georgia’s Southern Tech University. It did not end because during a hitchhiking trip to Los Angeles he accidentally befriended an actor who infected him with the bug of his profession, to the point that he decided to accompany him to several castings, and ended up appearing in several plays.

After five years barely surviving, he made his film debut in 1967 in two of the most powerful films of the year, where he took advantage of his bad face. In  Norman Jewison ‘s In the Heat of the Night ,  he played Harvey Oberst, the suspect in the crime, while in  Richard Brooks ‘s In Cold Blood ,  he played none other than Dick Hickock, a murderer and pedophile with whom he had a huge physical resemblance, which dazzled  Truman Capote .

“All the great actors wanted that role, from  Paul Newman  to  Steve McQueen ,” he recalled in an interview. “But Brooks took the option of hiring unknown people to make the public believe much more that we were guilty.” Shortly after he played a very similar character in  Jack Clayton ‘s The Great Gatsby ,  where he was the guy who ended the protagonist’s life.

During the following years he continued to work at a good pace, on titles such as  La fortaleza , by  Sydney Pollack ,  Los temerarios del aire , by  John Frankenheimer , and even worked with the Spanish  José Luis Borau , in  Río abajo . Despite his acceptable work, he never attracted much attention, except when he was nominated for a Golden Globe for Best Supporting Role for  The Ninth Configuration ,  William Peter Blatty ‘s debut , which would bring him back for  The Exorcist III . Among his numerous works, he stood out as the United States ambassador in  The Last Samurai .. On television he was an ecclesiastical pastor on  The X Files , and the father of one of the protagonists, Marg Helgenberger, on  CSI .

But  Scott Wilson  played his role that has penetrated the most in the zombie series  The Walking Dead , where he played the owner of the farm where the protagonist, Rick, and his companions, take refuge after leaving Atlanta. A man of faith, who ends up becoming a hero, the amputation of his leg has been one of the key moments of this production, in the fourth season of which he stopped appearing. However, those responsible for the fiction announced his reappearance in the following, the ninth, hours before his death. It seems that he came to film various scenes, so everything indicates that he will be seen again on the screen posthumously.

The interpreter married Heavenly Koh in 1977, with whom he was united until his death. The couple had no children.