Mitchell Ryan, Lethal Weapon and Dharma & Greg star, dies at 88

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Mitchell Ryan, a veteran character actor whose credits included the original Lethal Weapon, the gothic soap opera Dark Shadows, and the ABC sitcom Dharma & Greg, died Friday in Los Angeles. He was 88.

Ryan's longtime agent confirmed his death to EW. His stepdaughter, Denise Freed, told The Hollywood Reporter that he died of congestive heart failure.

Mitchell Ryan
Mitchell Ryan

James Sorensen/20th Century Fox Film Corp./Courtesy Everett Collection Mitchell Ryan, whose credits included 'Lethal Weapon' and 'Dharma & Greg,' has died.

Born in Cincinnati in 1934, Ryan appeared in more than 100 movies and TV shows in a career that spanned more than 50 years. After a term in the Navy, he got his first credit with the 1958 crime drama Thunder Road, starring Robert Mitchum, before appearing in such 1970s cult classics as Electra Glide in Blue, The Friends of Eddie Coyle (alongside Mitchum again), the Dirty Harry sequel Magnum Force, and the Clint Eastwood Western High Plains Drifter — all in the year 1973.

Later, Ryan played retired-general-turned-heroin-smuggler Peter McAllister in 1987's Lethal Weapon, memorably exiting the film in a massive explosion in an overturned car. He also appeared in movies including Liar Liar, Hot Shots! Part Deux, and Grosse Pointe Blank.

On the small screen, Ryan spent a year playing Burke Devlin on Dark Shadows before he was fired due to his alcoholism. He reportedly told TV Guide in 1976, "I was so drunk that year, I barely remember what it was about."

He later quit drinking. Ryan wrote in his 2021 autobiography, Fall of a Sparrow, "I'm blessed that, 30 years a drunk, I've managed to live a working actor's life to be envied. And I've lived a great deal of real life while I was at it. Sober for the next 30 years, I'm told I've come out of it all a good and a useful human being."

His other TV credits included NYPD Blue, Star Trek: The Next Generation (as William Riker's father), and The Golden Girls, among many others, as well as a starring role as Greg's eccentric, boozy father on Dharma & Greg. He also appeared on Broadway in the plays Wait Until Dark, Medea, and The Price.

"Today a man becomes an actor by going to university and studying his craft. I came up in a different time," Ryan wrote in Fall of a Sparrow. "I found my way in the school of hard knocks and the university that is the theater itself. It was a different time. A young man became an actor because someone thought he had the right look for a part. A pleasing voice. And he wasn't doing something else just then. Or anything else, really, ever. And he stayed an actor because, remarkably, he was good at it."

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