Tony Todd, a prolific actor whose more than 100 film and television credits included “Candyman” and “Final Destination,” died on Wednesday at his home in Los Angeles. He was 69.
Jeffrey Goldberg, Mr. Todd’s manager, announced the death in a statement on Saturday morning. He did not specify the cause.
Mr. Todd’s decades-long acting career spanned genres and mediums. He starred or had prominent roles in several films, including the 1990 remake of “Night of the Living Dead,” “The Crow,” “The Rock” and Oliver Stone’s Oscar-winning Vietnam War movie, “Platoon.” His television credits include “Star Trek: The Next Generation,” “24,” “The X-Files,” and many other shows. He also lent his rich voice to animation and video games.
He was perhaps best known for his role as the titular demon in the 1992 movie “Candyman,” He told The New York Times in 2020 that he was proud of playing the terrifying figure with a hook for a hand, a Black man who had been wronged in life and is summoned from the beyond by people who call his name five times while looking in a mirror — unleashing vicious attacks in which the Candyman slices to death those who dared to disturb him. “If I had never done another horror film,” he said, “I could live with that, and I’d carry this character.”
Mr. Todd reprised the role in the film’s 1995 and 1999 sequels and returned to it for the 2021 reboot, directed by Nia DaCosta and written by Jordan Peele.
In the “Final Destination” franchise, Mr. Todd played the role of the mysterious funeral-home owner William Bludworth — the rare recurring character in a film series that famously killed off all of its new characters by the time the end credits rolled.
Born on Dec. 4, 1954, in Washington, Mr. Todd earned a master’s degree from the Trinity Repertory Company, studied at the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center, in Waterford, Conn., and got started in political theater. He told The Times in 2020 that theater was his “first love.”
Mr. Todd “gave his time and resources to aspiring actors, consistently advocating for greater representation and authenticity within the industry,” Mr. Goldberg said in his statement.
On a social media post, Virginia Madsen, who starred with Mr. Todd in the original “Candyman,” called him a “poetic man” with a “voice that made it easy to swoon.” Mr. Todd, Ms. Madsen said, was the “rare actor who allowed himself to be open to the public attention.”
Information on survivors was not immediately available.
In the 2020 interview, Mr. Todd said that about 30 percent of his résumé was in horror roles, and that he kept going back to theater whenever film work became too boring or repetitive. He also noted that when he got started in the business, he would often show up on a set to find that “not only would I be the only Black actor, I would be the only Black person in jobs that anybody should have the opportunity to do if it wasn’t for nepotism.”
But that had changed over time, he said, and he would find people who looked like him all over the set, including people who knew how to apply his makeup and how to light him to counter the industry’s shortcomings in properly capturing his skin tone.
“Just the joy that occurred,” he said, “finally being allowed to the dance.”
The post Tony Todd, Prolific Actor Best Known for ‘Candyman,’ Dies at 69 appeared first on New York Times.
