Wilford Brimley dies at 85

TVLine

The character actor known for numerous movie roles and starring on NBC's Our House and Quaker Oats commercials, as well as recurring on CBS' The Waltons, died Saturday morning at his home in Utah. TMZ reports Brimley was in the hospital on dialysis for the past few days. Brimley was a member of the U.S. Marine Corp and worked as a bodyguard for Howard Hughes before he broke into Hollywood in the 1960s as a riding extra and stunt man in the Westerns at the urging of friend Robert Duvall. Brimley got his first big break recurring as Horace Brimley on The Waltons in 1974. In the 1980s, Brimley was known for looking much older than his actual age. At age 50, Brimley played an elderly man in a retirement home in Ron Howard's Cocoon, co-starring with Don Ameche and Hume Cronyn, who were decades older than him. Brimley was 51 years old in 1986 when he began starring in the two-season NBC drama Our House, playing the 65-year-old grandfather to Shannen Doherty and Chad Allen's characters. “I’m never the leading man,” he told The Dallas Morning News in 1993. “I never get the girl. And I never get to take my shirt off. I started by playing fathers to guys who were 25 years older than I was.” Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, Brimley starred in Quaker Oats commercials, followed later on by Liberty Medical diabetes testing supplies service ads. Brimley place in pop-culture was established in Phil Hartman and John Goodman's impressions of him on Saturday Night Live. Brimley also inspired the Brimley/Cocoon Line, a Twitter account making note of celebrities when they enter their 18,530th day of life (about 50 years and 9 months), the same age Brimley was when Cocoon premiered in 1985. "We loved @RealWilfordB’s work and we’re heartbroken to hear of his passing," the Brimley/Cocoon Line account tweeted. "We were so honored that he was amused by what we do here. The Line wouldn’t have been worth mentioning if he weren’t so good at making us believe in his characters. He was great, and irreplaceable."