News

Surprisingly, veteran actor Bruce Dern hasn’t done many regular television roles throughout his six-decade career. But he jumped at the chance to work with old friend Billy Bob Thornton on the Amazon Prime legal drama “Goliath.” He played Frank Zax, former pharmaceutical executive during the fourth and final season of the series. That role over the course of the episodes brought him a barnburner of a legal battle with his ruthless brother George, played by J.K. Simmons.

During our recent chat Dern reveals, “I’d never really done a scene in a courtroom. I had been a judge in ‘All the Pretty Horses’ for Billy Bob. Movies and acting are really about photographing, in a really interesting way, conversations. I liked that style in what they were doing… Billy said you’re here because you’re you, and you’re extremely unpredictable and it’s not planned out. You have your ‘Dernsies,...

Conrad Janis, a prolific character actor of TV, film and stage who had already become immediately recognizable even before landing his signature role opposite Robin Williams and Pam Dawber in the hit ’70s sitcom Mork & Mindy, died March 1 in Los Angeles. He was 94.

His death was confirmed by business manager Dean A. Avedon to The New York Times.

A son of the noted New York art collectors and gallerists Sidney and Harriet Janis, Janis, who along with his brother took over the family business, the Sidney Janis Gallery, later in life, was also a successful and lifelong jazz trombonist who even at the height of his Mork & Mindy success performed regularly with his group, the Beverly Hills Unlisted Jazz Band.

Born on February 11, 1928, in Manhattan, Janis launched his acting career in the mid-1940s, appearing in what would be the first of 12 Broadway shows, 1945’s Dark of the Moon and,...

Henry Darrow, a prolific TV actor from the 1950s through the early 2000s who found his breakthrough success as Manolito Montoya, son of a wealthy Mexican ranch owner on NBC’s hit 1967-71 Western The High Chaparral, died Sunday at his home in Wilmington, Nc. He was 87.

His death was announced on Facebook by his former publicist Michael B. Druxman. A cause was not specified.

In addition to The High Chaparral, Darrow is best remembered by daytime viewers for his Daytime Emmy-winning 1989-92 role in NBC’s Santa Barbara.

Already a familiar presence on television by the mid-1960s through appearances on series including Wagon Train, Stoney Burke, Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea and The Wild Wild West, Darrow scored his signature role on The High Chaparral opposite Leif Erickson, who played a wealthy Arizona ranch owner in the 1870s married to the Mexican daughter of a rival rancher.

Oscar winner and eight-time Emmy winner Cloris Leachman, best remembered as the delightfully neurotic Phyllis Lindstrom on “The Mary Tyler Moore Show” and her own subsequent sitcom, was remembered by Hollywood as an incredibly hilarious woman and “comedic genius.” She died of natural causes on Tuesday in Encinitas, Calif., and was 94.

Her portrayal of Phyllis garnered her two Emmys as a featured actress in a series during the mid-’70s and made her a household name. She won a supporting actress Academy Award in the early part of the decade for a far different character, an embittered small-town housewife in Peter Bogdanovich’s coming-of-age drama “The Last Picture Show.”

Her seemingly overnight success came only after two decades of hard work in theater, television and film. Leachman was in her 40s when stardom finally hit and effortlessly transitioned to more grandmotherly roles later in life.

Mel Brooks, director of “Young Frankenstein,...