Mitchell Ryan, who played William Riker's father Kyle died yesterday at 88.
Mitchell Ryan, the square-jawed character actor who played a heroin-smuggling retired general in the first Lethal Weapon movie, an ex-con on Dark Shadows and an obnoxious father on Dharma & Greg, has died. He was 88.
Ryan died Friday of congestive heart failure at his home in Los Angeles, his stepdaughter Denise Freed told The Hollywood Reporter.
Ryan was perhaps at his best as Shorty Austin, a ranch hand who gets mixed up with the wrong crowd, in the Lee Marvin-Jack Palance Western Monte Walsh (1970), directed by William Fraker from a novel by Jack Schaefer (Shane).
Ryan had a big year in 1973, when he appeared opposite Clint Eastwood in High Plains Drifter and Magnum Force — in the latter as a burned-out motorcycle patrolman — with Robert Mitchum in Peter Yates’ The Friends of Eddie Coyle and as a hippie-hating detective alongside Robert Blake in Electra Glide in Blue.
Apparently he had been a strong contender for the role of Jean-Luc Picard until Sir Patrick was cast. And the rest is a bald British Frenchman history.
