The American actor Frederic Forrest died last Friday at his residence in Santa Monica, California (USA) after “a long illness”, as confirmed by his friend and interpreter Barry Primus to the specialized media The Hollywood Reporter. Forrest was nominated for an Oscar as a supporting actor for his role in the melodrama The Rose (1979) and was part of the cast of Apocalypse Now, by Francis Ford Coppola, a director with whom he collaborated on three other films.
The actress Bette Midler, star of The Rose, also confirmed on social networks the news of the death of the actor, who was born in Texas on December 23, 1936. “Thank you to all your fans and friends for all your support in recent months. He was a remarkable actor and a brilliant human being, and I was lucky to have him in my life. I was at peace,” the actress wrote on her Twitter account.
Forrest was also known for playing Jay “Chef” Hicks in the cult film Apocalypse Now. “Freddie Forrest was a sweet and much-loved person, a wonderful actor and a good friend. The loss of him is heartbreaking for me,” Coppola said upon learning the news.
After earning minors in theater arts and minors in television and radio studies at Texas Christian University, Forrest moved to New York to study with actor Sanford Meisner and later became part of Lee Strasberg’s Actors Studio.
In 1966 he began working on the “Off-Broadway” stage to debut on the big screen in 1973 with When Legends Die, from which he would obtain roles in feature films such as The Conversation (1974), also by Coppola, and Missouri ( 1976), by Arthur Penn. Among the titles of his extensive filmography are Tucker: the man and his dream (1988), He is still alive (1978), The girl from the valley (1983), The Stone Boy (1984), The two Jakes (1990), Lassie (1994 ), Point Blank (1998) and The Quality of Light (2003). The actor also earned recognition for his work on the television series Quo Vadis? (1985), in which he got into the shoes of Petronius, in addition to the telefilm Larry, from 1974.
His last appearance on the big screen was in 2006, in Steve Zaillian’s remake of All the King’s Men, starring Sean Penn, Jude Law and Kate Winslet.
