Geoffrey Lewis, the American character actor with well over 200 film and television credits to his name, has died aged 79. The father of actress Juliette Lewis, he was probably most recognisable for a string of appearances alongside Clint Eastwood in the '70s and '80s. But his career extended much further than that.
Lewis was born in 1935 and spent his earliest years in Rhode Island, but his family upped sticks to California when he was ten. Noting his aptitude and enthusiasm for the performing arts, his school drama teacher arranged for him to return to New England for summer stints at the Plymouth Theatre in Massachusetts, and he also worked in New York in off-Broadway stage productions.
His first screen appearance was an uncredited walk-on as "Man In Park" in an obscure horror mystery called The Fat Black Pussycat. Bit parts aside, it would be another decade before he got his most significant break in Dick Richards' The Culpepper Cattle Company in 1972. Westerns seemed to fit his rumpled features, and in subsequent years he would also show up in the spaghettis My Name Is Nobody and They Died With Their Boots On, Irvin Kershner's The Return Of A Man Called Horse, Tom Horn, Heaven's Gate and in Eastwood's High Plains Drifter.
The latter marked his first role for Eastwood. He played a heavy, but would afterwards more often be Clint's easy-going sidekick or comedic foil in the likes of Thunderbolt And Lightfoot, Every Which Way But Loose, Bronco Billy, Any Which Way You Can and Pink Cadillac. The pair's final collaboration was on Midnight In The Garden Of Good And Evil in 1997.
Away from Eastwood and the Wild West he was an action movie regular, racking up 10 To Midnight with Charles Bronson, Tango & Cash with Sylvester Stallone and Kurt Russell, Double Impact with Jean-Claude Van Damme, Joshua Tree with Dolph Lundgren, The Assassin with Bridget Fonda, and Christopher McQuarrie's The Way Of The Gun with Benicio del Toro and Ryan Phillippe.
There were horror roles too: notably in Tobe Hooper's famous Stephen King mini-series Salem's Lot and in Rob Zombie's The Devil's Rejects. And on television he turned out for practically any famous show you can think of: Bonanza, Alias Smith & Jones, Mission: Impossible, Gunsmoke, The Waltons, Kung Fu, SWAT, Starsky & Hutch, The Six Million Dollar Man, Hawaii Five-O, Mork & Mindy, Little House On The Prairie, Blue Thunder, The Fall Guy, The A-Team, Magnum, P.I., MacGyver, Walker Texas Ranger, Murder She Wrote, The X-Files, Dawson's Creek, Law & Order: Criminal Intent, My Name Is Earl, House MD... He also wrote and directed episodes of the Fred Dryer cop series Land's End in the mid '90s. He kept busy.
As if all that wasn't enough, Lewis had a sideline as a 'musical storyteller', performing alongside his friend Geoff Levin under the name Celestial Navigations. He credited his full and happy life to his involvement with the Church of Scientology, was married twice, and had ten children, four of whom (Juliette, Lightfield, Matthew and Dierdre) followed him into the acting profession.
He died yesterday from natural causes at his home in Woodland Hills, California. "My hero. My dad. My strength. My friend. My hugs. My laughter. My love," Juliette said in an Instagram post. "I am forever my father's daughter and he will never be gone."