It's Empire's sad duty to report that the brilliant character actor, Peter Boyle, has died. He was 71.
Boyle, whose distinctive bald pate endured throughout his career, got his big break playing the title character in the 1970 drama Joe, about a racist, bigoted factory worker with a desire to commit murder. However, he witnessed audiences cheering his character, and swore off roles that he felt glamorised violence in movies, passing on the likes of Popeye Doyle in The French Connection, but still landing and turning in memorable performances in dramatic fare such as Taxi Driver, where he plays Wizard – the only guy who offers help to Travis Bickle.
But it will be comedy for which Boyle will be most fondly remembered. In 1974 he landed the role for which Empire** **will always love him most – The Monster in Mel Brooks' Young Frankenstein.
Often cast as a character actor, he amassed a vast number of supporting roles in everything from Yellowbeard to Red Heat to Malcolm X and Monster's Ball, while he won an Emmy in 1999 for the X-Files episode, Clyde Bruckman's final repose.
In 1996 he took the role for which he is best known, playing Frank Barone in sitcom Everybody Loves Raymond. He actually had suffered a heart attack at one point while making the show, but recovered and appeared in all ten seasons.
At the time of his death in a New York hospital on Tuesday, from complications arising from bone marrow cancer, Boyle had completed his role in the forthcoming film Shadows Of Atticus.
And here's a fact for you: Boyle, considered by many as one of Hollywood's genuine nice guys, was friends with John Lennon, with the ex-Beatle serving as Best Man at his wedding to Loraine Alterman. Boyle is survived by Loraine, and their two daughters, Lucy and Amy.