Fred Ward Cause Of Death, Obituary Not Yet available – Fred Ward, a veteran actor who had a long career playing everything from historic American heroes to a monster-fighting repairman, died on Friday, according to his representative. Ward died on Sunday at the age of 79. The cause of his death was not revealed right away.
According to nbcnews.com, Ward’s manager, Ron Hoffman said in a statement that the San Diego native and Air Force veteran worked as a short-order cook, boxer, and Alaskan lumberjack before discovering his real calling as an actor in the 1970s.
Ward’s first notable role was in Clint Eastwood’s 1979 prison escape film “Escape from Alcatraz,” but it was his performance in the 1983 space race epic “The Right Stuff,” which brought Tom Wolfe’s nonfiction best seller to the big screen.
Gus Grissom, one of the seven pioneering astronauts who propelled America into the space age, was played by Ward. The versatile actor is perhaps most known for his roles as down-on-their-luck repairmen in the 1990 science-fiction comedy “Tremors,” in which he and Kevin Bacon played flesh-eating worm monsters. The cult classic spawned a franchise with six sequels and a television series.
