Kenneth McMillan

Kenneth McMillan (July 2, 1932 – January 8, 1989) was an American actor born in Brooklyn, New York, the son of Margaret and Harry McMillan, a truck driver. He attended Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts. Before pursuing acting, McMillan worked at Gimbels Department Store, advancing from salesman to section manager and eventually to floor superintendent overseeing three floors. At age 30, he chose to change careers and studied acting under Uta Hagen and Irene Dailey. He married Kathryn McDonald on June 20, 1969, a union that lasted until his death; the couple had one child, actress Alison McMillan.

McMillan appeared on Broadway between 1970 and 1977, with credits including Borstal Boy, Streamers, and American Buffalo. He also performed frequently at the New York Shakespeare Festival and won an Obie Award for his Off-Broadway work in Weekends Like Other People.

His screen career began at age 41 with a small part in Sidney Lumet's police drama Serpico. He went on to play a borough commander in The Taking of Pelham One Two Three and took on a range of supporting roles across film and television, including a cowardly small-town sheriff in Tobe Hooper's 1979 television miniseries Salem's Lot, a racist fire chief in Ragtime who is confronted by a police commissioner played by James Cagney, and William Hurt's bitter paraplegic father in Eyewitness. He portrayed a wily safecracker in The Pope of Greenwich Village, a similar law enforcement figure in the 1987 Burt Reynolds film Malone, and Robert Duvall's detective partner in True Confessions. He also played a judge weighing Richard Dreyfuss's right to die in Whose Life Is It Anyway? and a lead detective pursuing a serial killer in the 1982 film The Clairvoyant.

Among his most recognized screen performances was the grotesquely obese Baron Vladimir Harkonnen in David Lynch's Dune, as well as the drunken father of Aidan Quinn's character in Reckless and the sleazy gambler Cressner in the horror anthology film Cat's Eye. His comedic work included a baseball club manager in Blue Skies Again, a corrupt security guard captain in Armed and Dangerous, and a senile veterinarian in Three Fugitives. In 1985, he played New York City's newly appointed police commissioner in the short-lived television crime drama Our Family Honor.

On television, McMillan held a recurring role as Jack Doyle, Valerie Harper's irate boss, on the sitcom Rhoda from 1977 to 1978. He also made guest appearances on Dark Shadows, Ryan's Hope, Kojak, Starsky & Hutch, The Rockford Files, Lou Grant, Magnum P.I., Moonlighting, and Murder, She Wrote. McMillan died of liver disease on January 8, 1989, at the age of 56.