Yahoo Lifestyle Bruce French Dies: ‘Passions’ Actor & Theater Star Was 79
Bruce French, a veteran of the stage and prolific character actor who worked with David E. Kelley and appeared in NBC’s aughts soap Passions across the entirety of its nine-season run, died Feb. 7 at the age of 79.
He died in Los Angeles of complications from Alzheimer’s (with which he was diagnosed around four years ago), longtime Days of Our Lives actress and French’s wife of 34 years, Eileen Barnett, told The Hollywood Reporter.
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“The world is a dimmer place today, missing this amazing light that has gone out,” French’s niece, Claire French, wrote on Facebook. “We will miss Uncle Bruce tremendously, but are confident that he is joyously reunited with his beloved mom and in the seat he told my dad to save him 💔”
Actor and friend Barry Cutler paid tribute to French on Facebook, recalling their first meeting during a stage adaptation of A Christmas Carol in the late ’70s: “Bruce seemed to me a best friend who just fell out of the sky. He cheered me on and presented me with a lovely ugly Scrooge mug for opening night. For many years thereafter, despite his superior talent, taste, and intelligence, he invited me along to great classical concerts and author’s lectures. He’d ask me to accompany him to movies on Oscar nights, to avoid the forever disappointment with that event. He’d ask me to dinners at his home to meet his wonderful friends (and, later, his beautiful and talented wife, Eileen Barnett). We’d discuss ideas for screenplays until he told me he was going to stop buying books on how to write because he wasn’t going to write and he’d rather read more interesting books.”
Born in Iowa on July 4, 1945, the son of a funeral director, French graduated from the University of Iowa, later serving with the U.S. Army during the Vietnam War and pursuing acting at the famed NYU Tisch School of the Arts.
Over the years, the veteran racked up over 150 acting credits, per IMDb. These include stints in episodes of notable Kelley series like L.A. Law, Picket Fences, Ally McBeal, The Practice, Boston Public and Boston Legal, as well as hits like Grey’s Anatomy, Criminal Minds, Mad Men, Gilmore Girls, House, The West Wing, Night Court, Cheers, Moonlighting, Matlock and many others. He often appeared as a preacher on television, with Barnett saying he would take a priest’s collar with him to auditions, per THR.
Additionally, French was in several Star Trek installments, including TV series Enterprise, Voyager and The Next Generation. He also appeared in the 1998 film Star Trek: Insurrection. From 1999 to 2008, he played Father Lonigan in Passions, the blind priest who had premonitions of evil.
On the film side, he appeared in Thank You for Smoking, Jurassic Park III, Wildcats and Fletch. However, as Cutler noted, “his best work was done in the theatre,” and French performed at the Mark Taper Forum, South Coast Repertory, Seattle Rep, Pacific Resident Theatre and Ralph Waite’s Los Angeles Actors’ Theatre, where he portrayed Lucky in Waiting for Godot, which was filmed for KCET’s Theatre in America series in 1977.
“But, beyond all that, he was one of the kindest, most gentle human beings I’ve ever encountered. An absolutely lovely and wonderful man,” Cutler concluded in his tribute.
In addition to his wife, he is survived by nieces Claire and Paula.
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