United States actor Peter Boyle, best known for playing the irritable father in the television comedy series Everybody Loves Raymond, has died at the age of 71, his publicist announced.
Boyle died on December 12 in a New York hospital after a long battle with multiple myeloma and heart disease, publicist Jennifer Plante said in a statement.
The balding actor starred in more than 200 episodes of the hit comedy from 1996 to 2005, playing Frank Barone, the father of sports writer Ray.
Brad Garrett, who worked opposite Boyle on Raymond, paid tribute to the late actor in an interview with entertainment news show Extra.
”I think of Peter and I smile. I laugh and I think about what I learned from him as an actor and a human being — he was a compassionate man and a great dad,” said Garrett, who played Raymond’s brother, Robert, in the series.
Doris Roberts, who played Frank’s wife, Marie, on the show, told Extra that Boyle’s death had not been unexpected. ”He was quite ill, so it was not a surprise,” she said, paying tribute to an actor she worked alongside for almost 10 years.
”When you work with someone for almost a decade it’s like family — he was my great buddy,” she said. ”We loved him — he was successful; he had a good time doing what he did.”
Boyle was also known for his film performance in Mel Brooks’s 1974 Young Frankenstein, in which he played the monster, and in Martin Scorsese’s 1976 Taxi Driver, in which he played a cab driver opposite Robert de Niro.
He plays Father Time in The Santa Clause III, which went on general release in the US last month.
Boyle received an Emmy award in 1996 for an appearance on The X-Files and was nominated five times for an Emmy for his portrayal of Frank Barone. — Sapa-AFP