Allen Garfield, ‘Nashville’ and ‘Conversation’ star, dies of COVID-19 complications

Allen Garfield, a veteran character actor who was a vital player in classic 1970s films including “The Conversation� and “Nashville,� has died at a rest home in Los Angeles of complications from COVID-19.

Garfield’s sister, Lois Goorwitz, said he died Tuesday at the Motion Picture & Television Country House and Hospital, the industry retirement facility where several staffers and some residents have tested positive for the virus. The actor was 80.

The Newark, N.J.-born Garfield first set out as a boxer and a sportswriter. While covering sports for New Jersey’s Star-Ledger, he studied acting at night and eventually joined the Actors Studio. There, he studied under Lee Strasberg.

“I became an actor in order to be trained by the masters, which I was, at the Actors Studio,� Garfield said. “From the moment I stepped foot in the Actors Studio, I audaciously stepped out and said who I was, for better or for worse. I put my stamp on things as an actor and as a director.�

Garfield would become a supporting-player mainstay of some of the best films of the ‘70s, including Francis Ford Coppola’s “The Conversation�; “The Candidate,� with Robert Redford; Robert Altman’s “Nashville�; Woody Allen’s “Bananas�; Billy Wilder’s “The Front Page�; William Friedkin’s “The Brink’s Job�; and Richard Rush’s “The Stunt Man.�

Garfield often played talky, anxious characters — salesmen, corrupt businessmen and sweaty politicians. They were universally authentic, so much so that Garfield often went underappreciated. In “The Conversation,� he played the weaselly surveillance expert Bernie Moran, a rival to Gene Hackman’s character. Coppola would cast him again in “One From the Heart� and “The Cotton Club.�

In “Nashville,� Garfield played the manager and husband of Ronee Blakly’s country star, Barbara Jean. He plays the furious police chief in 1987’s “Beverly Hills Cop II� who goes on an expletive-laden tirade against Eddie Murphy, Judge Reinhold and John Ashton before he gets fired himself.

Garfield was mourned throughout Hollywood. James Woods, who costarred with him in “Citizen Cohn,� remembered him as a “superb� actor. Author Don Winslow said, “I literally never saw a performance by Allen Garfield that wasn’t terrific. One of those not-so-well-known actors that makes everything they are in better.�

Garfield, born Allen Goorwitz on Nov. 22, 1939, had suffered several strokes, including one shortly before filming Roman Polanski’s “The Ninth Gate� in 1999 and one in 2004 that led to his residence at the Motion Picture & Television Fund home in Woodland Hills.