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IOL News
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- IOL News
'Chucky' actor Ed Gale dies at 61
Ed Gale played the role of Chucky in the iconic horror movie 'Child's Play'. Image: Instagram. Hollywood actor Ed Gale, best known for his portrayal of the creepy doll Chucky in the horror film "Child's Play", has passed away while in hospice care in Los Angeles. Details surrounding his death have not been made public yet. Confirming the news, his niece Kayse Gale took to Facebook to share an emotional tribute to her "fun uncle". She recalled how he embarked on his journey to California at the age of 20 with nothing more than $41 and a dream that would ultimately manifest into a prolific Hollywood career. "Ed has taken his final bow and is now headlining in the afterlife ... Ed loved 7-Eleven hot dogs with disgusting amounts of ketchup. He enjoyed reminiscing about his glory days, DJing at the Plainwell roller rink. "He hated Bill Maher for no good reason. He delighted in the slow build-up of telling a good story, and cheating at cribbage. He had one hell of a laugh, and he will be missed," she posted. Gale's career spanned nearly three decades, from 1986 until his retirement in 2014, during which he appeared in more than 130 films, television shows and commercials. He was born with dwarfism, a condition that did not hinder his aspirations or achievements. Video Player is loading. Play Video Play Unmute Current Time 0:00 / Duration -:- Loaded : 0% Stream Type LIVE Seek to live, currently behind live LIVE Remaining Time - 0:00 This is a modal window. Beginning of dialog window. Escape will cancel and close the window. Text Color White Black Red Green Blue Yellow Magenta Cyan Transparency Opaque Semi-Transparent Background Color Black White Red Green Blue Yellow Magenta Cyan Transparency Opaque Semi-Transparent Transparent Window Color Black White Red Green Blue Yellow Magenta Cyan Transparency Transparent Semi-Transparent Opaque Font Size 50% 75% 100% 125% 150% 175% 200% 300% 400% Text Edge Style None Raised Depressed Uniform Dropshadow Font Family Proportional Sans-Serif Monospace Sans-Serif Proportional Serif Monospace Serif Casual Script Small Caps Reset restore all settings to the default values Done Close Modal Dialog End of dialog window. Advertisement Next Stay Close ✕ Gale first stole hearts in the title role of Howard in the 1986 film "Howard the Duck", but it was his terrifying portrayal of Chucky that secured his place in horror film history. Gale reprised this role in two subsequent sequels, cementing his status within the genre. Beyond the world of Chucky, Gale's diverse range of appearances included a memorable role as dinosaur Tasha in the 1991 television series "Land of the Lost" and featured in films such as "Unstrung Heroes," which also starred Andie MacDowell, George Clooney, "O Brother, Where Art Thou?" and the 2013 "Mikeyboy." Despite his Hollywood fame, his niece shared: "Ed's favourite role was that of the 'fun uncle'. His love language was sharing his love of the entertainment industry and the magic of Hollywood with his nieces." Netizens took to the comments to share fond memories of the actor. Connie Matlock Boss commented, "I remember him with my brother Richard running around at the roller rink. Coming to my parents' house. Raiding the refrigerator. Then the guys taking off to the Drive In or Roller Rink. He will be missed." Jessica Bocade said, "I am so very sorry for your loss. Please know that your uncle still continues to bring me joy and I will remember him always whenever I watch 'Dreamer of Oz'."
Yahoo
4 days ago
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Ed Gale, Actor Who Played 'Chucky' In 3 Films, Dead At 61
Ed Gale, an actor and stuntman who was most famous for being the physical performer of Chucky, the evil doll that was the namesake of the Chucky horror franchise, died earlier this week at the age of 61. His niece, Kayse Gale, announced his death Tuesday on Facebook. The cause of death was not revealed. TMZ reported that the actor died while in hospice. Kayse Gale celebrated her uncle, who was born with dwarfism, by cheekily beginning her post, 'It is with a heavy heart and a surprisingly light coffin (see what I did there?) that we announce the sudden passing of our uncle.' Kayse Gale also noted that Ed Gale ventured out to Hollywood when he was 20 with only $41 in his pocket, but ended up lighting up the silver screen in cult classic films like 1986's 'Howard the Duck' and 1989's 'Chopper Chicks in Zombie Town.' She said appearing in cult films earned Ed Gale 'some serious street cred at every con he attended' and added, 'which he never stopped bragging about. Ever.' TMZ said that at the time of Gale's death, he was under investigation for allegedly attempting to solicit sex from minor boys. People noted that Gale admitted to soliciting minors for sex to a group called Creep Catchers Unit in April 2023. The LA County District Attorney's office told the publication that one case was referred to the LA City Attorney's Office in September 2023 for a possible misdemeanor filing. Ed Gale's first big role in Hollywood was wearing the suit for the title character in 'Howard the Duck,' while actor Chip Zien supplied the character's voice. He did a similar split role in 1988's 'Child's Play,' the film that first introduced the now-iconic Chucky character to film fans. He worked the costume while actor Brad Dourif supplied the voice. His role in the series helped define the character, 'Child's Play' director Tom Holland told People. 'Ed was a pleasure to work with on 'Child's Play' and played an important role in helping me sell the action of Chucky and thus a reason to fear Chucky,' Holland said. 'Ed was always ready to go when I called action.' Ed Gale went on to play Chucky in two other films in the franchise. and also appeared in films and TV shows like 'O Brother, Where Art Thou?,' 'Baywatch,' '3rd Rock From the Sun,' 'Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey' and 'Friday the 13th: The Series.' His last acting role was portraying an artist in the 2020 film 'Pandemonic,' and he also was interviewed for a 2022 science fiction documentary, 'In Search of Tomorrow.'
Express Tribune
4 days ago
- Entertainment
- Express Tribune
Chucky actor Ed Gale dies at 61 after hospice care in Los Angeles
Ed Gale, the actor best known for portraying the character Chucky in several films from the Child's Play horror franchise, has died at the age of 61, TMZ reported. A source present at the time of his death told TMZ that Gale passed away Tuesday while receiving hospice care in Los Angeles. The cause of death has not been disclosed. Gale's niece, Kayse Gale, commemorated his passing with a touching Facebook tribute, referring to him as her 'fun uncle.' She wrote that Gale had 'taken his final bow and is now headlining in the afterlife,' reflecting on his journey from a young dreamer with just $41 and a ride to California, to a prolific performer with over 130 acting credits spanning films, television shows, and commercials. Beyond his personal journey, Gale's career was defined by a wide range of memorable roles. He appeared in several cult classics, including Howard the Duck, Chopper Chicks in Zombietown, Spaceballs, and O Brother, Where Art Thou? However, he was most widely recognized for physically portraying the killer doll Chucky in the original Child's Play and two of its sequels, helping bring one of horror's most infamous characters to life. Despite his accomplishments, Gale had been embroiled in legal controversy in recent years. At the time of his death, he remained under investigation for allegedly attempting to solicit sex from minors. No charges had been officially filed. Gale leaves behind a legacy marked by creativity, controversy, and unforgettable characters. He is remembered by fans and colleagues alike for his unique contributions to cult cinema and for helping shape a horror icon.
Yahoo
12-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
The Cast of 'ER: 'Where Are They Now?
When it comes to medical procedural dramas, ER walked so your favorite show can run. The hit show, which premiered on NBC in 1994, followed a group of healthcare workers in the fictional County General Hospital as they tried to find the balance between their demanding jobs and equally chaotic personal lives. The medical drama featured up-and-comers who would later become some of the world's biggest stars — including George Clooney, Julianna Margulies, Noah Wyle, Eriq La Salle and more, who all went on to have huge careers after the show ended its 15-season run. Below, see what the main cast of season 1 of ER has been up to since the show wrapped in 2009. On his way to becoming a movie star, George Clooney brought tons of charisma (and a very famous Caesar haircut) to the role of Dr. Doug Ross on ER. Following his five-season stint on the show, he went on to star in blockbuster movies such as From Dusk Till Dawn, O Brother, Where Art Thou?, Ides of March, the Oceans franchise, and many more films. Though he spent most of his career as a highly sought-after bachelor, Clooney found love with barrister and human rights advocate Amal Alamuddin, whom he married in Italy in 2014. The two welcomed twins Alexander and Ella on June 6, 2017. Years before Eriq La Salle's Peter Benton was running things on ER, the actor was making audiences laugh with his role as the oh-so-suave "Prince of Soul Glo," Daryl Jenks in Coming to America and had credits in movies and TV shows such as A Different World, Quantum Leap, The Human Factor and more. Following his eight-season stint on the medical drama, La Salle continued to act, lending his talents to 24, How to Make It in America and Logan, with his latest credit in 2024's On Call. Making sure that everything ran smoothly and that the troops were in line was Mark Greene, played by Anthony Edwards. Prior to landing the role, Edwards appeared in It Take Two, Northern Exposure, Don't Go Breaking My Heart and other notable works. Like La Salle, Edwards was a fixture on the show for the first eight seasons before leaving to spend more time with his family. Though his character was killed off the show, he came back in a flashback sequence in season 15. Edwards married makeup artist Jeanine Lobell in 1994; the couple welcomed four children together before divorcing in 2015. The actor found love again with Mare Winningham, whom he had previously worked with on ER and remained friends with through the years, growing closer during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. They eloped in 2021 and have been living happily ever after since. Noah Wyle won the hearts of America playing baby-faced Dr. John Carter for 11 seasons. Over the years, the actor continued to forge a career in Hollywood, snagging roles in Falling Skies, Enough, The Librarians, The Californians and many more. Thirty years after the premiere of ER, Wyle is back in the emergency room, playing Dr. Michael "Robby" Robinavitch in the critically-acclaimed Max series The Pitt. Offscreen, Wyle is a dedicated family man. The actor has been married to wife Sara since 2014. The two welcomed daughter Frances a year later; she joined her older siblings Owen and Auden, whom Noah shares with his ex-wife Tracy Warbin. Julianna Margulies' portrayal of troubled registered nurse Carol Hathaway was so poignant, she won an Emmy in the show's first season. And her star only continued to rise. Following her six seasons on the show, Margulies snagged roles in The Sopranos, Canterbury's Laws, Snakes on a Plane, and more, before she landed the lead role of Alicia Florrick in The Good Wife, for which she won an additional two Emmys. Margulies has been married to lawyer Keith Lieberthal since 2007. The two share a son named Kieran Lindsay Lieberthal, whom they welcomed on Jan. 17, 2008. Decades before he was causing havoc as Frank Gallagher on Shameless, William H. Macy was saving lives as chief of surgery Dr. David Morgenstern on ER. In the years between ER and Shameless, he appeared in The Maiden Heist, The Lincoln Lawyer, Versailles, Marmaduke and several other projects. The two-time Emmy winner has been married to wife Felicity Huffman since 1997. They welcomed their eldest daughter, Sophia, in 2000 and their youngest Georgia joined the family in 2002. By the time Sherry Stringfield landed the role of Susan Lewis on ER, she had a well-established career. The actress had previously played Blake Thorpe in CBS' Guiding Light for three years. She also landed a small role in NYPD Blue before finally making her way to Cook County Hospital. Following her time on the show, Stringfield has appeared in Tell Me You Love Me, The Stepfather, Under the Dome and more. Her most recent credit was in Criminal Minds: Beyond Borders, on which she played Karen Garrett from 2016 to 2017. Stringfield has two children, Milo and Phoebe, whom she shares with ex-husband Larry Joseph. Playing nurse Haleh Adams was Yvette Freeman, who portrayed the recurring character for the entirety of the show's 15-season run. In the years since, Freeman has appeared in Days of Our Lives, The Bold and the Beautiful, Orange Is the New Black, A Black Lady Sketch Show and more. According to IMDB, she's been married to Lanny Hartley since 1996. Like Freeman, Emily Wagner played the role of Doris Pickman for all of ER's 15 seasons. Over the years, she's added to her resume with appearances in Judging Amy, Jack & Jill, Criminal Minds, Mr. Woodcock and more. Keeping the good vibes going amid all the chaos was licensed practical nurse Malik McGrath, who was played by the late Dearon Thompson, most commonly known as Deezer D. Before his death at age 55 in 2021, the actor also made appearances in Romy and Michele's High School Reunion, Bringing Down the House, In the Mix and more. Manning the phones and making sure the medical staff was updated with news of patients and then some, was County General Hospital's desk clerk Jerry Markovic, played by Abraham Benrubi. The actor has been working steadily since the late '80s, when he played a bodyguard in Living Dolls. You've also seen Benrubi in Blossom, Parker Lewis Can't Lose, Sleepwalkers, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Criminal Minds, Men in Trees and plenty more notable works. Read the original article on People
The Independent
17-03-2025
- Entertainment
- The Independent
How O Brother, Where Art Thou? got inspired – then upstaged – by its own soundtrack
One autumn day in 1959, a field recordist named Alan Lomax sat at the roadside and watched a Mississippi chain-gang chop logs. One of the prisoners, James Carter, led a chorus of his fellow inmates in a bluesy work-song as they swung their axes. Lomax taped the men before proceeding on his way. The song slipped its chains, lived on and roamed free. The singers at the roadside, God help them, stayed put. Carter's primitive prison work-song, 'Po Lazarus', would eventually resurface on O Brother, Where Art Thou?, Joel and Ethan Coen's freewheeling comedy about a trio of dopey fugitives in Depression-era Dixieland. You can hear it playing over the opening scene, just before George Clooney's preening, wiley Ulysses Everett McGill cuts through the cornfield to the railroad to escape. Everett has convinced his sidekicks (played by John Turturro and Tim Blake Nelson) to join him in a search for buried treasure, but the man is a huckster who lies as naturally as he breathes, and so it's likely his treasure will amount to a pile of fool's gold. Times and dates tend to blur in rural, off-grid Mississippi and so it is too with O Brother, Where Art Thou?, which has its feet, hands and fingers in several different decades. The film is re-issued this week to commemorate its 25th anniversary. But the story is set in 1937 and features a repertoire of songs that range from Harry McClintock's 1928 rendition of 'The Big Rock Candy Mountain' to pin-sharp folk covers from the late 1990s. As Everett chivvies his buddies across the Delta, tangling with sheriffs and Klansmen and corrupt politicians, this music dips and swells in glorious sympathy. 'Po Lazarus' is the overture, the early signpost, pointing the way to a spread of bluegrass ditties and gospel staples that extends all the way through to the final credits. The soundtrack provides the film's soul and its connective tissue. It would later prove to be its stash of buried treasure as well. O Brother, Where Art Thou? is adapted – very loosely – from The Odyssey, playfully lifts its title from a pompous unmade movie in Preston Sturges's Sullivan's Travels (1941) and bounces, Br'er Rabbit-style, through a cartoonish Deep South and a road 'fraught with peril'. The film takes its lead from Clooney's energetic performance in that it is bumptious, charming and possibly a shade too pleased with itself. It's not my favourite Coen brothers' picture (that's a three-way tie between No Country for Old Men, The Big Lebowski and Inside Llewyn Davis) but it's irrepressibly entertaining and more savagely satirical than it first appears, like a Looney Tunes tour of America's Jim Crow era. The characters may be exaggerated, verging on the grotesque, but there is usually a real-world inspiration lurking just out of shot. The imperilled bluesman who claims to have sold his soul to the devil is an obvious stand-in for Robert Johnson, while Charles Durning's crooked, pork-barrel governor is based on the true-life 'Pappy' O'Daniel, who sang old-time country-western and once stole an election from the young Lyndon Johnson. If O Brother contains anything so blunt as a message, it is that good music endures and redeems those who play it – even when those people are a band of bumbling convicts called the Soggy Bottom Boys. In the case of O Brother, it lasts even longer than a good movie does, because while the Coens' comedy remains beloved by its fans (not least, bizarrely, the former US senator Mitt Romney, who cites it as his all-time favourite film), in cultural terms it has been gazumped by its merch, upstaged by its music. It joins Saturday Night Fever and The Harder They Come on an elite list of hit movies that wound up playing second fiddle to their soundtrack albums. On some level, perhaps, this was all preordained. The Coens had only a title and a vague story in mind when they hired producer T-Bone Burnett to help fill in the blanks. Burnett in turn made a playlist of American folk songs that would serve as a guide when the Coens wrote their script. So the O Brother soundtrack existed before the film even did. It wore an assistant's hat during the writing and production process and then returned at the end to claim its share of the spoils. Following the initial fanfare of the movie's release, Burnett's 18-track compilation was credited with almost single-handedly sparking the early-Noughties folk revival. It sold nearly 9 million copies in the US alone and helped boost the careers of Alison Krauss and Gillian Welch. At the 2002 Grammys – where the soundtrack won the Album of the Year award – 74-year-old Ralph Stanley reprised his a capella version of 'O Death' from the film. Many of the older musicians featured in O Brother, Where Art Thou? had passed on by the time the soundtrack album came out. But the producers were eventually able to find lowly James Carter, who was then in his mid-seventies and living a quiet life in Chicago. They presented him with a plane ticket to the Grammys plus a royalty cheque for $20,000, both of which came as such a surprise to Carter that he reportedly had to step outside to roll a nerve-soothing cigarette. Carter believed that he had put his Mississippi chain-gang days behind him. He said he had only a faint, fading memory of singing 'Po Lazarus' on the road. Had the man seen the movie, it might have made perfect sense. The Soggy Bottom Boys' recording of 'Man of Constant Sorrow' becomes a runaway hit; even 'Pappy' O'Daniel claims to be a big fan. Good music survives and finds fresh generations of fans, and freed songs circle back to rescue the men who once sang them.
