Tony Todd , an actor who played the killer in Candyman and its 2021 sequel and appeared in Platoon and The Crow among more than 240 film and TV credits spanning 40 years, died November 6 at his home in Los Angeles. He was 69. His reps confirmed the news to Deadline but did not provide a cause of death.
Born on December 4, 1954, in Washington, D.C., Todd pursued acting at the Eugene O’Neill National Actors Theatre Institute and Trinity Rep Conservatory, where he honed his skills and developed his commanding style.
Among his first screen roles was playing the heroin-addicted Sergeant Warren in Oliver Stone’s Best Picture Oscar-winning Vietnam War classic Platoon. Todd went on to guest on such popular 1980s and ’90s series as 21 Jump Street, Night Court, MacGyver, Matlock, Jake and the Fatman, Law & Order, The X-Files, NYPD Blue, Beverly Hills 90210, Xena: Warrior Princesss and Murder, She Wrote and Star Trek: The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine and Voyager. He also recurred as pesky TV news reporter Matt Rhodes on Homicide: Life on the Street and as Gus Rogan in more than a dozen 2013 episodes of The Young and the Restless.
All the while, Todd continued to act for the big screen. He appeared in 1980s dramas Lean on Me, Colors and Charlie Parker biopic Bird, starring Forest Whitaker. But his best-known film roles came during the following decade.
The 6-foot-5 Todd starred in the 1990 remake Night of the Living Dead as Ben, the role played by Duane Jones in George A. Romer.
