August 19, 2009

Character Actor Henry Beckman Dies


June 23, 2008

Henry Beckman a character actor whose career spanned from the 1950s to the present century, died June 17 in Barcelona, Spain. He was 86.

A distinctive performer with a gift for accents, Beckman appeared in hundreds of television series, feature films and commercials in the U.S. and Canada, often cast as villains or foreigners.

Born in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Beckman served in the Canadian military during WWII and survived the Normandy invasion on D-Day.

After the war, he ran a theater in New York and in the early 1950s moved to Hollywood to pursue acting.

His extensive television resume included guest appearances on such 1960s series as Dennis the Menace, Dr. Kildare and The Twilight Zone. He had larger roles on Peyton Place and McHale’s Navy.

Later credits included a regular role on the series Here Come the Brides and episodes of The Rockford Files, Happy Days and Columbo. More recently, he played Detective Briggs in The X-Files.

His feature films included The Man Upstairs with Katherine Hepburn, David Cronenberg’s The Brood, My Husband’s Secret Life, Lion of Oz, Shadow of a Doubt and Blood River.

Beckman also wrote screenplays, and was a member of the Writer’s Guild of Canada, the Screen Writers Guild of America, SAG, AFTRA, ACTRA and the Director’s Guild of Canada.

He is survived by his wife and two children from a previous marriage.

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