Bill Cobbs, a prolific character actor whose half-century career bloomed when he was middle-aged and ranged from “Sesame Street” to “The Sopranos” to “Night at the Museum,” died on Tuesday at his home in the Inland Empire region of California. He was 90.
His death was announced on social media by his brother, Thomas G. Cobbs, and confirmed by his agent, Carmela Evangelista. No cause was given.
Mr. Cobbs was not a Hollywood star, but his face was one anyone who watched television or movies over the past several decades could recognize. He appeared in more than 200 films and TV shows and also had a prominent career as a theater actor.
Wilbert Francisco Cobbs was born on June 16, 1934, in Cleveland, where he grew up. He spent eight years working as a radar technician in the Air Force, where he started doing stand-up comedy, he said in a 2012 interview with the podcast “Movie Geeks United.” He also worked at IBM and as a car salesman.
His experience in an amateur production at the Karamu House Theater in Cleveland of “Purlie Victorious,” Ossie Davis’s comedy about a Black preacher’s efforts to reclaim his hometown church, had an especially profound effect on his career.
“That play taught me that there were a lot of things I could say in theater, on the stage and in movies and in television, that were very important, that were meaningful things, that in addition to being a means of entertaining people and touching them in different ways, there were things you could say related to the human condition,” he said.
He was 36 when he moved to New York in 1970 to pursue acting, according to his profile on the Internet Movie Database, and he worked at various odds jobs, including selling toys, driving a taxi and repairing office equipment. He made his professional acting debut in the Negro Ensemble Company production “Ride a Black Horse,” and he spent several years appearing in small theaters. He was also seen on Broadway in plays including “Black Picture Show” and August Wilson’s “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom.”
His first television credit was in the late 1970s on “Vegetable Soup,” a public television series for children that tried to counter racial and cultural stereotypes by exposing its audience to characters of various backgrounds, ethnicities, races, and cultures. He made his big-screen debut in a minor part, a man on a subway platform, in a major movie, the 1974 thriller “The Taking of Pelham One Two Three.” He had one line, he told The Plain Dealer of Cleveland in a 2013 interview.
“I came back home to see my mom and dad, and all our friends and neighbors went to see the movie, and everyone was waiting for my appearance,” he said. “I walk up to a policeman in the subway and say: ‘Hey, man. What’s goin’ on?’”
In the 1980s, he had roles in movies including the Eddie Murphy-Dan Aykroyd comedy “Trading Places” (1983), John Sayles’s cult science fiction film “The Brother From Another Planet” (1984) and “The Color of Money” (1986), Martin Scorsese’s sequel to “The Hustler,” with Paul Newman and Tom Cruise. In 1987, he landed a role alongside Dabney Coleman in the lone season of the ABC sitcom “The Slap Maxwell Story.”
He also had recurring roles on “I’ll Fly Away,” “The Gregory Hines Show” (he played Mr. Hines’s father), “The Drew Carey Show” and, more recently, the 2012-13 sitcom “Go On,” which starred Matthew Perry.
Mr. Cobbs’s TV appearances chart the history of the medium over the past five decades: He was seen on “Good Times,” “One Life to Live,” “L.A. Law,” “Kate and Allie,” “Spenser: For Hire,” “Sesame Street,” “I’ll Fly Away,” “ER,” “Northern Exposure,” “Walker, Texas Ranger,” “The Sopranos,” “The West Wing,” “NYPD Blue,” “JAG,” “One Tree Hill,” “Star Trek: Enterprise,” “Six Feet Under,” “Superior Donuts” and “Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.”
Among his notable film roles were the manager of the singer played by Whitney Houston in “The Bodyguard” (1992); the “clock man” in the Coen brothers’ “The Hudsucker Proxy” (1994); a coach in “Air Bud” (1997), the hit comedy about a basketball-playing dog; a police officer in the thriller “Demolition Man” (1993); a famous jazz pianist in “That Thing You Do!” (1996); Master Tinker in “Oz the Great and Powerful” (2013); and a doctor in the 2002 John Sayles drama “Sunshine State.”
One of his favorite roles, according to his publicist, Chuck I. Jones, was as a security guard in “Night at the Museum,” alongside Ben Stiller, Dick Van Dyke and Mickey Rooney. He reprised the role in a sequel, “Night at the Museum: Secret of the Tomb.”
In 2020 Mr. Cobbs won a Daytime Emmy Award for his work on “Dino Dana,” a children’s series about a young girl who loves dinosaurs.
His last credited appearance came in 2023, in the mini-series “Incandescent Love.” Mr. Cobbs never married; his brother was his only immediate survivor.
“I enjoy what I do, I really enjoy it,” Mr. Cobbs said in 2012. “It’s exciting to have a project and work on it and see it come to fruition, so I can find joy doing this so much.”
Alex Traub contributed reporting.
Alexandra E. Petri
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