Bill Cobbs, Actor of ‘The Hudsucker Proxy’ and ‘The Bodyguard,’ Dies at 90 – National
Bill Cobbs, the veteran actor who became a ubiquitous and wise-cracking presence on screen as an older man, has died. He was 90 years old.
Cobbs died Tuesday at his home in the Inland Empire, Calif., surrounded by family and friends, his publicist Chuck I. Jones said. Cobbs likely died of natural causes, Jones said.
A Cleveland native, Cobbs has starred in films such as The Hudsucker Proxy, The bodyguard And Night at the museumHe made his first appearance on the big screen in a short-lived role in 1974. The taking of Pelham one two three. He became a lifelong actor with some 200 film and television credits. The lion’s share came in his 50s, 60s and 70s, as filmmakers and TV producers turned to him again and again to imbue small but pivotal roles with a dried-out, worn-out soul.
Cobbs has appeared on television shows including The Sopranos, The west wing, Sesame Street And Good time. He was Whitney Houston’s manager. The bodyguard (1992), The Coen Brothers’ Mystical Watchmaker The Hudsucker Proxy (1994) and John Sayles’ Doctor The state of the shining sun (2002). He played the coach in Air bud (1997), the security guard of Night at the museum (2006) and the father on The Gregory Hines Show.
Cobbs rarely got the kind of major roles that stand out and win awards. Instead, Cobbs was a familiar, memorable man who left an impression on audiences, regardless of screen time. He won a Daytime Emmy Award for Outstanding Limited Performance in a Daytime Series Program. Dino Dana in 2020.
Wendell Pierce, who starred alongside Cobbs in I will fly away and the Gregory Hines Showremembered Cobbs as “a father figure, a griot, an iconic artist who touched me through the way he led his life as an actor,” he wrote on the social media platform X.
Cobbs later said that acting seemed to him a way to express the human condition, particularly during the civil rights movement of the late 1960s.
“To be an artist, you have to have a sense of giving,” Cobbs said in a 2004 interview. “Art is kind of a prayer, right? We respond to what we see around us, what we feel, and how things affect us mentally and spiritually.
