Candyman and Final Destination star Tony Todd dies at 69
Sign up now: Get ST's newsletters delivered to your inbox
Tony Todd was perhaps best known for his role as the titular demon in the 1992 movie Candyman. He was pictured here in 2020.
PHOTO: NYTIMES
DeeperDive is a beta AI feature. Refer to full articles for the facts.
LOS ANGELES – Tony Todd, a prolific American actor whose more than 100 film and television credits included Candyman (1992 to 2021) and Final Destination (2000 to present), died at his home in Los Angeles on Nov 6. He was 69.
Mr Jeffrey Goldberg, Todd’s manager, announced the death in a statement on Nov 9. He did not specify the cause.
Todd’s decades-long acting career spanned genres and mediums. He starred or had prominent roles in several films, including the 1990 remake of horror flick Night Of The Living Dead, The Crow (1994), The Rock (1996) and American director Oliver Stone’s Oscar-winning Vietnam War movie Platoon (1986).
His TV credits included Star Trek: The Next Generation (1987 to 1994), The X-Files (1993 to 2018) and 24 (2001 to 2014). He also lent his rich voice to animation and video games.
He was perhaps best known for his role as the titular demon in the 1992 movie Candyman.
He told The New York Times in 2020 that he was proud of playing the terrifying figure with a hook for a hand, a black man who had been wronged in life and is summoned from the beyond by people who call his name five times while looking in a mirror – unleashing vicious attacks in which the Candyman slices to death those who dared to disturb him.
“If I had never done another horror film,” he said, “I could live with that, and I’d carry this character.”
Todd reprised the role in the film’s 1995 and 1999 sequels and returned to it for the 2021 reboot, directed by American film-maker Nia DaCosta and written by American actor-film-maker Jordan Peele.
In the Final Destination franchise, Todd played the role of the mysterious funeral-home owner William Bludworth – the rare recurring character in a film series that famously killed off all of its new characters by the time the end credits rolled.
Born on Dec 4, 1954, in Washington, Todd earned a master’s degree from the Trinity Repertory Company, studied at the Eugene O’Neill Theatre Centre in Waterford, Connecticut, and got started in political theatre. He told The Times in 2020 that theatre was his “first love”.
Todd “gave his time and resources to aspiring actors, consistently advocating for greater representation and authenticity within the industry”, Mr Goldberg said in his statement.
On a social media post, American actress Virginia Madsen, who starred with Todd in the original Candyman, called him a “poetic man” with a “voice that made it easy to swoon”. Todd, Madsen said, was the “rare actor who allowed himself to be open to the public attention.”
In the 2020 interview, Todd said about 30 per cent of his resume was in horror roles, and that he kept going back to theatre whenever film work became too boring or repetitive.
He also noted that when he started in the business, he would often show up on a set to find that “not only would I be the only black actor, I would be the only black person in jobs that anybody should have the opportunity to do if it wasn’t for nepotism”.
But that had changed over time, he said, and he would find people who looked like him all over the set, including people who knew how to apply his make-up and how to light him to counter the industry’s shortcomings in properly capturing his skin tone.
“Just the joy that occurred,” he said, “finally being allowed to the dance.”
Information on Todd’s survivors was not immediately available. NYTIMES
