Bonnie And Clyde actor Michael J Pollard dies at 80 after suffering a cardiac arrest
Actor Michael J Pollard died on Wednesday at Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center in Los Angeles at age 80.
The actor suffered a cardiac arrest, his friend Dawn Walker told The Hollywood Reporter.
The star was best known for his role in the 1967 gangster–romance movie Bonnie And Clyde with Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway.
Film icon: Michael J. Pollard, who helped define the 1960s with his role in Bonnie And Clyde, died Wednesday at Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center in Los Angeles at age 80; seen in 2008
The cast: With, from left, Gene Hackman, Estelle Parsons, Warren Beatty, Faye Dunaway in the 1967 movie Connie And Clyde
He also popped up on the TV series Lost in Space and Star Trek and appeared in the films Roxanne, Scrooged, Tango & Cash, Melvin And Howard and The Woods.
Director Rob Zombie took to Facebook for a tribute to the actor who worked with him on 2003’s House Of 1000 Corpses.
‘We have lost another member of our House of 1,000 Corpses family. I woke up to the news that Michael J. Pollard had died. I have always loved his work and his truly unique on screen presence,’ wrote Zombie.
‘He was one of the first actors I knew I had to work with as soon as I got my first film off the ground. He will be missed. I can’t believe all three of my friends in this picture are now gone.’
The actor and the beauty: With bombshell Dunaway. The movie was directed by Arthur Penn
Saluting a legend: Director Rob Zombie took to Facebook for a tribute to the actor who worked with him on 2003’s House Of 1000 Corpses
Though he appeared in an impressively diverse array of films and television shows, Pollard is most identified by his role in Bonnie And Clyde, in which he played the impish getaway man C. W. Moss.
The role was a composite of real-life gangsters W.D. Jones and Henry Methvin, and the role earned him an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor.
He was nominated in the same category as his co-star Gene Hackman, while Beatty and Faye Dunaway were both nominated in the lead categories.
The film ultimately earned two Academy Awards, for Estelle Parsons’ supporting role and Best Cinematography.
Another good one: Here the star is in Little Fauss And Big Halsy with Robert Redford
Pollard was cast in the film after he wowed star and producer Warren Beatty with his improvisational skills after they appeared together on the 1959 TV series The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis.
In Bonny And Clyde he played a gas attendant who was seduced by the title characters and joined them in their spree of bank robberies and murders.
The film featured a revolutionary interplay of violence, romance and humor which was highly influential on subsequent films that would come to define American cinema in the ’60s and ’70s.