‘Halloween’ star Charles Cyphers dead at 85
Veteran character actor Charles Cyphers, best known for his recurring collaborations with John Carpenter that spanned decades, has passed away aged 85 following a brief illness.
Cyphers made his screen debut in Isaac Hayes’ 1974 blaxploitation bounty hunting thriller Truck Turner. However, it wouldn’t be too long before he fell into the orbit of a beloved filmmaker in Carpenter who made a point of repeatedly casting them in a number of different roles spanning multiple genres.
Carpenter seemingly took a liking to Cyphers after casting him as police officer Starker in Assault on Precinct 13, with the actor becoming a regular part of his repertory. He was subsequently tasked to play local sheriff Leigh Brackett in the seminal slasher Halloween, which ended up becoming a legacy role.
The actor reprised the part in the Rick Rosenthal-directed sequel Halloween II, before returning 40 years later to dust off his sheriff’s badge in David Gordon Green’s Halloween Kills. Other Carpenter-helmed credits of his include Dan O’Bannon in The Fog, the secretary of state in Escape from New York, and Sam Phillips in the Kurt Russell-led made-for-TV movie Elvis.
The prolific performer also worked on Clint Eastwood’s Honkytonk Man, Charles Bronson’s Death Wish II, Academy Award-winning drama Coming Home, star-studded sports comedy Major League, and even Chuck Norris vehicle A Force of One. Following his death, manager Chris Roe shared a statement with Variety.
“Charles was a lovable and sensitive man,” he said. “He always had the best stories, and you got a full performance while he told you. He was a close friend and client on many years who will be dearly missed.”
Cyphers’ small screen credits were equally eclectic, ranging from an ongoing part in The Betty White Show to guest spots in a number of disparate but equally popular episodic titles like Lynda Carter’s Wonder Woman, hit medical drama ER, The Dukes of Hazzard, Starsky & Hutch, acclaimed miniseries Roots, and Seinfeld.
Embodying Halloween‘s Brackett was undoubtedly the most memorable part of Cyphers’ career, though, for the sole reason he tackled one of the principal roles in a horror flick that ended up having a monumental effect on both the genre and independent cinema, and his contributions to the opening two instalments clearly weren’t forgotten or overlooked when he was drafted in for the recent sequel trilogy.
Carpenter was far from the only heavyweight filmmaker he came into contact with, of course, with Cyphers notching over 100 film and television credits over the course of his career.
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