Over the course of a screen career that lasted more than sixty years, character actor Mitchell Ryan racked up a list of credits more than 130 titles long. Sadly, there won’t be any more titles added to his filmography. Deadline confirmed that Ryan has passed away at the age of 88.
Born in Cincinnati, Ohio on January 11, 1934, Ryan served in the US Navy before trying out stage acting – and that went very well for him, as Deadline says he worked on stage almost every night, both on and off Broadway, for over a decade. He made his screen debut in the 1958 “moonshiner vs. gangsters” movie Thunder Road, and from there made appearances in such films and TV shows as Naked City, High Plains Drifter, Electra Glide in Blue, Magnum Force, Chase, Cannon, Barnaby Jones, The Rockford Files, Two-Minute Warning, Executive Suite, Dallas, The A-Team, North & South: Book 1, Santa Barbara, the ’89 version of Mission: Impossible, Jake and the Fatman, Who’s the Boss?, The Golden Girls, Aces: Iron Eagle III, Hot Shots! Part Deux, NYPD Blue, Walker: Texas Ranger, Renegade, Judge Dredd, Murder She Wrote, Silk Stalkings, Wings, Liar Liar, and Grosse Pointe Blank… Yeah, you probably saw Ryan in something at some point.
His most well-known roles came in Lethal Weapon, where he played the villainous General; Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers, where he was the Man in Black / Doctor Wynn; and the sitcom Dharma & Greg, where he played the role of Edward Montgomery for 119 episodes. Genre fans may also know Ryan for playing ex-convict Burke Devlin for one season of the classic series Dark Shadows. Ryan would go on to admit that he was fired from the show because he was an alcoholic at that time (1966/’67).
When they were looking for someone to cast as the Captain on Star Trek: The Next Generation, Ryan was a contender. Of course, the role went to Patrick Stewart – but Ryan did still appear on the show, playing Kyle Riker (father of the Enterprise’s first officer William T. Riker) in a season 2 episode.
Ryan served on the national board of the Screen Actors Guild from 1993 to 2002, and as president of the SAG Foundation from 1999 to 2008. SAG-AFTRA national executive director Duncan Crabtree-Ireland shared the following tribute:
We are deeply saddened to say goodbye to Mitch, who was an active and proud member of Screen Actors Guild for decades. He inspired many to union service and loved the craft of acting, helping to create many of the performer programs at the then-Screen Actors Guild Foundation. We are grateful and better as a union for his dedication.”
Our sincere condolences go out to Ryan’s family, friends, and fans.