Brian Manion Dennehy (; July 9, 1938 – April 15, 2020) was an American actor. Renowned for his performances on stage and screen and once described as "perhaps the foremost living interpreter" of Eugene O'Neill's works, he received two Tony Awards, a Laurence Olivier Award, and a Golden Globe Award, in addition to nominations for six Primetime Emmy Awards and a Grammy Award.
He had a decades-long relationship with Chicago's Goodman Theatre where much of his O'Neill work originated. He also regularly played Canada's Stratford Festival, especially in works by William Shakespeare and Samuel Beckett. Dennehy was inducted into the American Theater Hall of Fame in 2010.
His screen roles included First Blood (1982), Gorky Park (1983), Silverado (1985), Cocoon (1985), F/X (1986), Presumed Innocent (1990), Tommy Boy (1995), Romeo + Juliet (1996), Ratatouille (2007), and Knight of Cups (2015). Dennehy won the Golden Globe Award for Best Actor – Miniseries or Television Film for his role as Willy Loman in the television film Death of a Salesman (2000).
Early life and education
Brian Manion Dennehy and Edward Dennehy, a wire service editor for the Associated Press. He had two brothers, Michael and Edward. He was of Irish ancestry and was raised Catholic. The family relocated to Long Island, New York, where Dennehy attended Chaminade High School in the village of Mineola.
Dennehy entered Columbia University in New York City on a football scholarship in the fall of 1956, pausing his college education for five years to serve in the United States Marine Corps. He returned to Columbia in 1960 and graduated in 1965 with a B.A. in history. While acting in regional theater he supported his family by working blue-collar jobs including driving a taxi and bartending. He hated his brief stint as a stockbroker for Merrill Lynch in their Manhattan office in the mid-1970s. He later described how working odd hours allowed him to attend matinee theater performances that provided his acting education: "I never went to acting school—I was a truck driver and I used to go see everything I could see—Wednesday afternoons".