Nicholas Pryor, the busy character actor who portrayed Tom Cruise’s father in and Kathleen Robertson’s dad on during a career that spanned seven decades, has died. He was 89. Pryor died Monday of cancer at his home in Wilmington, North Carolina, his wife, actress Christine Belford, told .
From 1997-2002, Pryor played the former spy Victor Collins on the spinoff , culminating a long career in daytime soap operas that included stints on , , , and . Pryor recurred on Fox’s as A. Milton Arnold, the chancellor of California University and father of Robertson’s Claire Arnold, from 1994-97.
And he was the father of Paula Devicq’s character, Kirsten Bennett, on another Fox series, . Earlier, he played vice principal Jack Feldspar on the 1987-88 NBC drama , created by and starring . On the big screen, Pryor was Barbara Feldon’s hapless husband in Michael Ritchie’s (1975); the pipe-smoking college professor who rides with Michael Sarrazin in an AC Cobra in ‘s (1976); the museum director who meets his end in a train yard in (1978); and the father of Robert Downey Jr.
’s drug-addled Julian in (1987). Nicholas David Probst was born in Baltimore on Jan. 28, 1935.
His father, Stanley, worked in the pharmaceutical industry. While attending the all-boys Gilman School in Baltimore and Yale University, Pryor honed his acting skills on the stage with the Drummond Players in Baltimore, the Camden Hills Theatre in Maine, the Oregon Shakespeare Festival and the Star Theatre in Minn.