John Heard Dead at 72; TV Roles Included The Sopranos, Prison Break
Veteran actor John Heard, familiar to many as Macaulay Culkin’s Home Alone dad, was found dead on Friday in a Palo Alto, Calif. hotel room. He was 72.
A cause of death is not yet known, reports TMZ.
John Heard was a very talented actor who established himself as a respected thespian in the late 1970s and early ’80s, though he is perhaps better known for his turns as Kevin McCallister (Macaulay Culkin’)s father in the Home Alone (1990) movies.
John was born in Washington, D.C., to Helen (Sperling), who acted in community theatre, and John Heard, who worked for the U.S. government. John established himself with roles in the movies Between the Lines (1977), Chilly Scenes of Winter (1979) (a.k.a. “Head Over Heels”), and Heart Beat (1981) (in which he played Jack Kerouac to Nick Nolte’s Neal Cassady and Sissy Spacek’s Carolyn Cassady), before giving a tour de force performance as a hideously wounded (both physically and psychologically) Vietnam veteran in Cutter’s Way (1981) (a.k.a. “Cutter and Bone”) opposite Jeff Bridges. He also shined as Reverend Dimmesdale (one of America’s first religious hypocrites) in the 1979 PBS version of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter (1979).
On the small screen, Heard’s credits included CBS’ adaptation of the 1994 John Grisham film The Client, The Sopranos (for which he earned an Emmy nomination as corrupt cop Vin Makazian), Jack & Bobby, Prison Break (playing Sara Tancredi’s governor father), NCIS: Los Angeles and, most recently, spring episodes of Fox’s APB and WGN America’s Outsiders.
In addition to his turns as Peter McCallister, Heard’s many film credits include Big, and Beaches.
