Charles Cioffi, the veteran character actor who portrayed lots of cops and crooks in projects including Klute, Shaft, Get Christie Love! and The X-Files, died Friday at his home in Marina del Rey, his family announced. He was 90.
The New York native also appeared seven times on Broadway — he played John Hancock in the musical 1776 that ran from 1969-72 — and was in such soap operas as Ryan’s Hope, As the World Turns, Days of Our Lives (as the revenge-seeking bomber businessman Ernesto Toscano) and All My Children.
He also portrayed Tom Cruise’s widowed father in All the Right Moves (1983).
Charles Michael Cioffi was born in New York on Oct. 31, 1935. He attended Michigan State University, made his professional acting debut at the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis and made it to Broadway for the first time in 1968 in King Lear for the Repertory Theatre of Lincoln Center.
In 1971 movies, he portrayed the killer stalking the call girl Bree Daniels (Jane Fonda) in Alan J. Pakula’s Klute and Lt. Vic Androzzi, the NYC cop who reluctantly deals with Richard Roundtree’s private eye, in Shaft, directed by Gordon Parks.
Cioffi got tough in the gangster films Lucky Luciano (1973), The Don Is Dead (1973) and Crazy Joe (1974) and was Lt. Matt Reardon, the boss of Teresa Graves’ character, on the 1974-75 ABC cop show Get Christie Love!
Later, he was Chief George Morris alongside Telly Savalas in four Kojak telefilms that aired from 1989-90 and FBI section chief Scott Blevins on six episodes, including the pilot, of The X-Files from 1993-97.
Cioffi’s résumé included the films The Thief Who Came to Dinner (1973), The Other Side of Midnight (1977), Time After Time (1979), Costa-Gavras’ Missing (1982), Remo Williams: The Adventure Begins (1985), Newsies (1992) and Used People (1992) and TV stints on Bonanza, The F.B.I., The Bionic Woman, Hawaii Five-O, Flamingo Road, Lou Grant, Taxi, St. Elsewhere, Law & Order, L.A. Law, NYPD Blue, The Larry Sanders Show, Frasier and The Practice.
Survivors include his wife of 66 years, Anne, and their two sons.
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