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Richard Farnsworth

 
Actor: Richard Farnsworth
Home > Library > Entertainment & Arts > Actors
  • Born: Sep 01, 1920 in Los Angeles, California
  • Died: Oct 06, 2000 in Lincoln, New Mexico
  • Occupation: Actor
  • Active: '70s-'90s
  • Major Genres: Western, Drama
  • Career Highlights: Anne of Green Gables, The Straight Story, Misery
  • First Major Screen Credit: The Outer Limits: Cry of Silence (1964)

Biography

No one can accuse Richard Farnsworth of taking the easy road to film stardom: by the time he finally got name-above-the-title billing, he was 61 years old, and had been in films for 34 of those years. A veteran Hollywood stunt man, he eventually became a respected actor in his own right, and earned widespread adulation for two outstanding lead performances, first as the veteran train robber released into a changed world in 1982's The Grey Fox and then as the dedicated Alvin Straight in 1999's The Straight Story.

Born in Los Angeles on September 1, 1920, Farnsworth was a high-school dropout who became a rodeo rider at the age of 16. When the call went out from MGM for expert horsemen to appear in the Marx Brothers comedy A Day at the Races (1937), Farnsworth was hired as a combination stunt man/extra. The stint was the beginning of a decades-long Hollywood career, over the course of which he did stunt work for many a cowboy star and swashbuckler. For nearly a decade, he was exclusive stunt man/stand-in for Roy Rogers, accepting such occasional outside assignments as Guy Madison's riding double on the 1950s TV Western Wild Bill Hickok (three decades later, Farnsworth would himself impersonate Hickok in the theatrical feature The Legend of the Lone Ranger). Farnsworth's studio years were fairly lucrative; in addition to working with directors ranging from Cecil B. De Mille and Sam Peckinpah, it was not unusual for the stunt man to receive a bigger paycheck than the actors for whom he doubled. In the 1960s, the performer used his considerable clout in his field to co-create the Stuntman's Association, a group which would fight to safeguard the rights and working conditions of the men and women who risked life and limb for Hollywood.

As he grew older, Farnsworth thought it wise to cut back on the athletics and to seek out speaking roles. By 1976, he was working as a full-time actor, his weather-beaten countenance and self-assuredness enlivening many an otherwise "flat" scene. He was nominated for an Academy Award for his supporting appearance as Dodger in Comes a Horseman (1978); the star of that film was Jane Fonda, whose father, Henry, had been doubled by Farnsworth in The Tin Star (1957). In 1982, Farnsworth won Canada's Genie Award for his starring role as an elderly, elegant bank robber in The Grey Fox. On two occasions -- the 1984 baseball flick The Natural and the 1992 TV series Boys of Twilight -- the actor co-starred with another venerable stunt man-cum-character actor, Wilford Brimley. Farnsworth continued to craft a career not unlike Brimley's, making small but memorable supporting appearances in many A-list Hollywood productions, including Misery and Havana (both 1990).

Farnsworth had been living in semi-retirement on his New Mexico ranch for most of the 1990s when he received a call from director David Lynch to star in The Straight Story, the real-life tale of an elderly widower who drives a tractor from his Iowa home to the Wisconsin bedside of his estranged, gravely ill brother (Harry Dean Stanton). The film received a warm reception, much of which was directed at the septuagenarian's understated, plainspoken performance. Honored with a Golden Globe nomination and an Independent Spirit Award for his work, Farnsworth would also receive a Best Actor nod at the 2000 Academy Awards -- becoming the oldest person to be nominated for the award. Though stricken with terminal bone cancer, Farnsworth continued to make public appearances -- at film festivals, award ceremonies, and even the National Cowboy Symposium -- until the debilitating disease caused him to take his own life at his New Mexico home in October 2000. The actor's namesake, Richard "Diamond" Farnsworth, continued his father's legacy by becoming a Hollywood stunt man. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
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Richard Farnsworth

Richard Farnsworth in The Straight Story
Born September 1, 1920(1920-09-01)
Los Angeles, California,
United States
Died October 6, 2000 (aged 80)
Lincoln, New Mexico,
United States
Occupation Actor
Years active 1937–1999
Spouse(s) Margaret Hill (1947-1985)

Richard W. Farnsworth (September 1, 1920 – October 6, 2000) was an American actor and stuntman. His film career began in 1937, however he achieved his greatest success for his performances in The Grey Fox (1982) and The Straight Story (1999), for which he received a nomination for an Academy Award for Best Actor.

Contents

Early life

Farnsworth was born in Los Angeles, California to a housewife mother and an engineer father.[1] He was raised during the Great Depression. He lived with his aunt, mother and two sisters in downtown Los Angeles after his father died when he was seven years old.

Career

He was working as a stable hand at a polo field in Los Angeles for $6 a week, when he was offered a chance to make $7 a day plus a box lunch as a stuntman. When he was seventeen, he started by riding horses in films in 1937, in The Adventures of Marco Polo with Gary Cooper. He performed in several horse-riding stunts in such films as the Marx Brothers' A Day at the Races (1937) and Gunga Din (1939). What differentiated Farnsworth from other western actors was his gradual transition into acting from stunt work. He made uncredited appearances in numerous films, including Gone with the Wind (1939), Red River (1948), The Wild One (1953), and The Ten Commandments (1956). He was on the set of Spartacus (1960) for eleven months. He laughed when he said he did not look like a gladiator, but drove a chariot. However, it was not until 1963 that he finally received his first acting credit.

Farnsworth's acting career was largely in western films, although he did appear in the 1977 television miniseries Roots and the short lived but critically acclaimed 1992 summer replacement The Boys of Twilight. He also appeared television commercials. Farnsworth became well known in the Pacific Northwest for portraying the grounds keeper who saw the mythical "Artesians" in the 1980s Olympia Beer ad campaign. In 1979, Farnsworth was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for Comes a Horseman. However, his breakthrough came when he played stagecoach robber Bill Miner in the 1982 Canadian film The Grey Fox, for which he won a Genie Award. In 1985, he appeared in the Canadian miniseries Anne of Green Gables, winning a Gemini Award for his performance as Matthew Cuthbert. Another of his prominent roles was as a suspicious sheriff in the film version of Stephen King's Misery (1990). He also appeared in The Natural in 1984.

In 1999, he was nominated for Best Actor for The Straight Story. When David Lynch asked to see if he wanted to be in the simple but emotional movie The Straight Story, Farnsworth had no idea who he was. Farnsworth did not like violence or swearing, and so his agent was very careful and told him that Lynch was the director who had made The Elephant Man. Fortunately, he liked this movie. When Farnsworth and Lynch met, he reiterated his dislikes. Lynch reassured him that there would be none of that in the movie. The role, a rarity for a man his age, showed Hollywood that "there's a lot of talent out there".

Farnsworth has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 1560 Vine Street. In 1997, he was inducted into the Western Performers Hall of Fame at the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.

Personal life and death

Farnsworth was married to Margaret "Maggie" Hill for 38 years. She is the mother of his two children, Diamond and Missy. She died in 1985. Toward the end of his life, he met Jewly Van Valin on the bridle trail, a stewardess 35 years his junior. Farnsworth and Van Valin started riding together, and were engaged. He was well liked and busy in his community of Lincoln, New Mexico, where he had a 60-acre (240,000 m2) ranch, and moved after his wife's death. Farnsworth was the spokesperson for the Lincoln County Cowboy Symposium, an annual event in Ruidoso, NM. He made a video with cowboy poet Waddie Mitchell called Buckaroo Bard. He also helped with the Last Great Cattle Drive of This Millennium in 1999. Shortly before his death, he was presented with an award from the Governor of New Mexico for Excellence and Achievement in the Arts.

Farnsworth was diagnosed and treated for prostate cancer in the early 90s. By 1999, he had been diagnosed as having terminal bone cancer. He made the movie The Straight Story while in considerable pain.

Farnsworth shot himself at his ranch in Lincoln, New Mexico.[2] He is interred with his wife Margaret in the Forest Lawn, Hollywood Hills Cemetery in Los Angeles, California.

Filmography

References

  1. ^ Richard Farnsworth
  2. ^ Silverman, Stephen M. (July 16, 1998). "Richard Farnsworth: Suicide". People. http://www.people.com/people/article/0,,618509,00.html. Retrieved 15 June 2009. 

External links


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