Kip Niven

Clifford Wallace Niven, known professionally as Kip Niven, was born on May 27, 1945, in Kansas City, Missouri, and died on May 6, 2019, in Kansas City, Missouri, at the age of 73. He was an American actor and theater director whose career spanned film, television, and stage.

Niven grew up in Prairie Village, Kansas, the son of William Watson Niven and Elizabeth Hopkins Niven. He attended Shawnee Mission East High School before briefly enrolling at Baylor University, ultimately earning his degree from the University of Kansas. Following graduation, he served three years in the United States Army, including a tour of duty in Vietnam.

His screen career began in earnest in 1972, when he appeared in the premiere episode of The Sixth Sense. The following year he appeared in Magnum Force, the Clint Eastwood film in which he played one of four rogue cops alongside David Soul, Robert Urich, and Tim Matheson. Over the course of his career he accumulated nearly 100 film and television credits, with recurring roles on series including The Waltons, Alice, and Emergency.

Niven's Broadway career ran from 1988 to 1991 and included appearances in Chess and Nick & Nora. In his later years he returned to the Kansas City area, where he became a prominent figure in the local theater community and worked as a theater director.

His first wife, Susan Tisdall Niven, whom he married in 1968 and with whom he had two children, died in a car accident in 1981. In 1982 he married actress Linda Lavin; they divorced in 1992. He married Beth Reiff in 1994, and the couple had a daughter together. Reiff died in 2012. Niven was living in Leawood, Kansas, at the time of his death from a heart attack on May 6, 2019.