Ned Beatty – the actor whose first film role in 1972’s Deliverance launched him on a long, prolific and accomplished career – has died at the age of 83.
Ned Beatty – the actor whose first film role in 1972’s Deliverance launched him on a long, prolific and accomplished career – has died at the age of 83. B eatty’s manager, Deborah Miller, said he died on Sunday of natural causes at his home in Los Angeles surrounded by friends and loved ones. After years in regional theatre, Beatty was cast in Deliverance as Bobby Trippe, the happy-go-lucky member of a male river-boating party terrorised by backwoods thugs. The scene in which Trippe is brutally attacked became the most memorable in the movie and established Beatty as an actor whose name moviegoers may not have known but whose face they always recognised. “For people like me, there’s a lot of ‘I know you! I know you! What have I seen you in?’” Beatty remarked in 1992. Beatty received only one Oscar nomination, as supporting actor for his role as corporate executive Arthur Jensen in 1976′s Network, but he contributed to some of the most popular movies of his time and worked constantly, his credits including more than 150 movies and TV shows. He was equally memorable as Otis, the idiot henchman of villainous Lex Luther in the first two Christopher Reeve Superman movies and as the racist sheriff in White Lightning.
