Bill Cobbs, actor of The Bodyguard and A Night at the Museum, dies at 90

American actor Bill Cobbs died at the age of 90 at his home in the Inland Empire, California, surrounded by family and friends. His publicist, Chuck Jones, was the one who confirmed the news and said that the death “was probably due to natural causes.”-Newyork AP

Born in Cleveland, Cobbs acted in films such as The Big Jump, The Bodyguard, and Night at the Museum. He made his first appearance on the big screen in a role in the 1974 film Pelham 1, 2, 3. He made almost 200 film and television appearances over the course of his career, the majority coming after the age of 50, when producers and directors began approaching him repeatedly for small but significant parts.

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Wilbert Francisco Cobbs, his real name, was born on June 16, 1934. For eight years, he served in the United States Air Force after graduating from high school in Cleveland. He was an automobile salesman in later life. He was asked to perform in a play one day by a client. Without knowing it, that was the beginning of a prolific career on stage.

Cobbs first appeared on stage in 1969. He began performing in the Cleveland theater and later moved to New York, where he joined the Negro Ensemble Company. He later expressed in a public statement that the performance spoke to him about the human condition, especially in the context of the late 1960s Civil Rights Movement.

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“To be an artist, you have to have a sense of generosity,” he said in a 2004 interview. “Art is kind of like a prayer. We respond to what we see around us, what we feel, and how things affect us mentally. and spiritually,” he added.

Cobbs acted in movies as well as television series, including “The Sopranos,” “The West Wing,” “Sesame Street,” and “Good Times.” On the large screen, he was Whitney Houston’s manager in “The Bodyguard” (1992), the mystical watchmaker in the Coen brothers’ “The Hudsucker Proxy” (1994), and the doctor in “Sunshine State” (“The Promised Land”). by John Sayles in 2002. He also played the coach in “Air Bud” (1997), the security guard in “A Night at the Museum” (2006), and the father in “The Gregory Hines Show.”

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