Tony Todd, an actor who played the killer in Candyman and appeared in the Final Destination franchise and Platoon among more than 240 film and TV credits spanning 40 years, died November 6 at his home in Los Angeles. He was 69.
His reps confirmed the news to Deadline but did not provide a cause of death.
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Born on December 4, 1954, in Washington, D.C., Todd pursued acting at the Eugene O’Neill National Actors Theatre Institute and Trinity Rep Conservatory, where he honed his skills and developed his commanding style. Among his first screen roles was playing the heroin-addicted Sergeant Warren in Oliver Stone’s Best Picture Oscar-winning Vietnam War classic Platoon.
Todd went on to guest on such popular 1980s and ’90s series as 21 Jump Street, Night Court, MacGyver, Matlock, Jake and the Fatman, Law & Order, The X-Files, NYPD Blue, Beverly Hills 90210, Xena: Warrior Princesss and Murder, She Wrote and Star Trek: The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine and Voyager. He also recurred as pesky TV news reporter Matt Rhodes on Homicide: Life on the Street and as Gus Rogan in more than a dozen 2013 episodes of The Young and the Restless.
All the while, Todd continued to act for the big screen. He appeared in 1980s dramas Lean on Me, Colors and Charlie Parker biopic Bird, starring Forest Whitaker. But his best-known film roles came during the following decade.
The 6-foot-5 Todd starred in the 1990 remake Night of the Living Dead as Ben, the role played by Duane Jones in George A. Romero’s iconic 1968 original. His next big role likely is his most famous — playing the mythical title creep with a hook for a hand in Candyman (1992) — a character he reprised for two sequels in 1995 and 1999.
Candyman in the 1992 film was the ghost of Daniel Robitaille, whose parents were enslaved in the 1800s and became an accomplished painter. But eventually he fell for a white woman whose enraged father sent a lynch mob to kill him. Robitaille was burned on a spot where a public housing project later is built and where a series of unexplained murders occurs.
The Candyman legend lived on in the 2021 sequel directed by Nia DaCosta. It was among a number of horror roles for Todd that would continue throughout his 40-year career, including playing funeral home owner William Bludworth in Final Destination and multiple sequels. He also played Grange, the right-hand man of Top Dollar (Michael Wincott) in 1994’s The Crow starring Brandon Lee.
“You gotta have audience sympathy for the character in some way or another,” Todd told Deadline in a 2022 interview. “There’s gotta be something attractive about the character that makes people want to root for them but at the same time feel repulsed by the idea. And for me personally, for every film that I do, I create a backstory for all my tortured people and my heroes alike.”
Todd continued to work steadily in film, TV and video games throughout the 21st century, including a recurring gig as the CIA director on NBC’s Chuck, Freeform’s Dead of Summer and MTV/VH1’s Scream. His silver-screen roles mainly were in B-movies.
He also was a sought-after voice actor, lending his rich and resonant pipes to dozens of roles ranging from Star Trek and Call of Duty games to TV’s Transformers Prime and Be Cool, Scooby-Doo and such films as Transformers: Rise of the Fallen.
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Possessed of a warm laugh and generous spirit that belied his hulking appearance, Todd continued to work into this year including Stream and a lead role in The Bunker — one of more than a dozen up upcoming credits, per IMDb. He appeared in last year’s Stream, Realm of Shadows and Werewolf Game and in the 2022 SXSW-premiering Bitch Ass.
Todd also about a half-dozen small films during the 2000s and appeared as himself in dozens of mostly horror-themed documentaries and docuseries.
Information on survivors was incomplete.