American actor Barry Newman, known to many for his role in the 1971 cult action thriller Vanishing Point, has died.
Newman was 92 when he died on 11 May. At the time of writing, no further information on his death is available.
The actor played former race car driver Kowalski in the Richard C Sarafian-directed feature film. Despite having changed career paths to be a delivery driver, Newman’s Vanishing Point character returns to his speed-driving ways and darts around in a Dodge Challenger after becoming entangled in a criminal conspiracy.
Vanishing Point is considered an essential piece of the action genre by its fans.
The following year, Newman starred with English actor Suzy Kendall in the British action film, Fear is the Key.
The actor also starred in the Seventies legal drama series Petrocelli. The programme ran for two seasons between 1974 and 1976.
As the title character of Tony Petrocelli, Newman portrayed an Italian-American lawyer from Boston who traded in the big city life for a quieter everyday experience in the sleepy Arizona city of San Remo.
Newman was of Belarusian and Austrian heritage. He was raised in Boston, Massachusetts.
After completing an anthropology degree in 1952, Newman was drafted into the US Army and made use of the saxophone and clarinet skills he had acquired in high school as part of the 3rd Army Band in Atlanta.
Following his discharge from the army years later, Newman began studying for his master’s degree in anthropology at Columbia University.
He discovered acting when a friend, who was studying acting with theatre director Lee Strasberg, invited him to sit in on a class. Only five weeks into his master’s course, a freshly inspired Newman left to study acting.
Newman’s other notable on-screen appearances include playing a heavy in Steven Soderbergh’s 1999 crime film The Limey, 13 episodes of the short-lived NBC medical drama Nightingales, and episodes of Murder, She Wrote, and popular teen drama The OC.
His final role was in the 2022 independent drama, Finding Hannah, which also starred Juliet Mills, Christina Pickles, and Judy Geeson.
Newman is survived by his wife, Angela.
