Tom Noonan, a character actor and filmmaker known for playing villains in \u201cManhunter\u201d and \u201cThe Last Action Hero,\u201d died on Valentine\u2019s Day. He was 74. <\/p>\n
The death was confirmed by Fred Dekker, director of \u201cThe Monster Squad,\u201d who wrote on Facebook<\/a>, \u201cTom\u2019s indelible performance as Frankenstein … is a highlight of my modest filmography.\u201d <\/p>\n Noonan had a nearly 40-year career on TV and in film, making his mark with a role in \u201cManhunter,\u201d the 1986 movie based on a Thomas Harris novel. <\/p>\n In \u201cManhunter,\u201d which starred William Peterson of \u201cCSI: Crime Scene Investigation\u201d as an FBI agent and \u201cSuccession\u201d star Brian Cox as Dr. Hannibal Lecter, Noonan played Francis Dolarhyde, the serial killer also known as the Tooth Fairy. It was a performance that \u201cknocked out\u201d Dekker, who then pursued Noonan for \u201cMonster Squad.\u201d<\/p>\n Playing a killer wasn\u2019t unusual for Noonan, who stood 6-foot-5 or 6-foot-6, depending on who you trust. On a 2013 episode of TV\u2019s \u201cThe Blacklist,\u201d he played \u201cthe Stewmaker,\u201d a man with a taste for dissolving human bodies in acid. In the 1993 comedy \u201cThe Last Action Hero\u201d he was the Ripper, a fictional nemesis who comes to life in the high-concept film-within-a-film starring Arnold Schwarzenegger as action star Jack Slater.<\/p>\n Born in Greenwich, Conn., on April 12, 1951, Noonan was raised by his math-teacher mother Rita and a large extended family after the death of his father, John Ford Noonan Sr. He went to school at Yale Drama and later founded New York\u2019s Paradise Factory theater with Jack Kruger at the site of the Paradise Ice Cream Factory, where the ice cream cone was invented. The two built a theater and rehearsal rooms where the condemned building stood. <\/p>\n Paradise Factory now bills itself as \u201cbringing the rigor of theatrical discipline to the process of cinematic art, and bringing the intimacy and immediacy of the cinema into theatrical performance art.\u201d <\/p>\n \u201cI wish I had more success as an actor,\u201d the New York-based actor told The Times<\/a> with a dash of melancholy in 2015. \u201cI think people call me because they\u2019re channel surfing late at night and they see me in a movie on cable.\u201d<\/p>\n In that story, about the actor and his friend and collaborator Charlie Kaufman and Kaufman\u2019s stop-motion animation film \u201cAnomalisa,\u201d<\/a> a Times staff writer described Noonan: \u201cLike Kaufman, he has a dark worldview, an idiosyncratic sensibility, blackly comic thoughts and, at times, an endearing crankiness.\u201d<\/p>\n In \u201cAnomalisa,\u201d Noonan was credited with playing \u201cEveryone Else\u201d \u2014 and that wasn\u2019t an exaggeration. Jennifer Jason Leigh and David Thewlis played the leads; Noonan voiced more than 40 other roles<\/a> in the film. <\/p>\n \u201cEven I can\u2019t tell if it\u2019s me sometimes,\u201d he told The Times in 2015 about the extensive studio-recording process. \u201cI mean, I recognize the voice, but I\u2019m not sure where it came from.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cMy first TV interview was with Tom Noonan for a local NYC show called MIDDAY(?),\u201d actor Jerry O\u2019Connell wrote early Wednesday on Instagram<\/a>, including a blurry image of them on the show\u2019s set. \u201cI was so nervous. Tom was so kind. I saw him in every (NYC) play he was in after. He bought my brother and I tickets to Eddie Murphy\u2019s RAW (we were too young to purchase). Btw, on this episode, I was talking about a movie about to come out (Stand By Me) and Mr. Noonan was talking about his movie (Manhunter). Rest In Peace LEGEND.\u201d<\/p>\n Noonan appeared in the famous 1980 flop \u201cHeaven\u2019s Gate\u201d and cast a creepy gothic shadow decades later in \u201cThe House of the Devil<\/a>\u201d (2009). He was a ghoulish host of a late-night television horror program in the 2005 vampire movie \u201cThe Roost,\u201d then played a wagon-train missionary in the 2007 western \u201cSeraphim Falls.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cRobocop 2\u201d (1990) had Noonan as Cain, a messianic maniac with a nose ring<\/a> who leads a gang of terrorist dope dealers.<\/p>\n In 18 episodes of the series \u201cHell on Wheels<\/a>,\u201d which ran for five seasons on AMC, he was the Rev. Nathaniel Cole. Other TV credits included episodes of Fox\u2019s \u201cThe X-Files,\u201d HBO\u2019s \u201cThe Leftovers,\u201d CBS\u2019 \u201cCSI: Crime Scene Investigation\u201d and the Louis C.K. series<\/a> \u201cLouie\u201d (FX) and \u201cHorace and Pete.\u201d<\/p>\n Noonan\u2019s half-dozen directing credits include the 1994 film \u201cWhat Happened Was …,\u201d which was produced as a play, then became a movie and then won the Sundance Grand Jury Prize for dramatic feature. In addition to writing and directing the movie, Noonan played the lead male role opposite actor Karen Sillas. Noonan also won Sundance\u2019s Waldo Salt screenwriting award for the script.<\/p>\n The next year, his feature \u201cThe Wife\u201d \u2014 a dark comedy once again written, directed by and starring Noonan \u2014 was a nominee for the same Sundance Grand Jury Prize. Described by the New York Times<\/a> as a \u201cbleakly funny evisceration of modern marriage,\u201d the movie co-starred Karen Young, who was Noonan\u2019s wife from 1992 to 1999. <\/p>\n And Noonan\u2019s 2015 movie \u201cThe Shape of Something Squashed\u201d was born out of confusion and some despair after his agent called him with what initially looked like a part in one of the \u201cMockingjay\u201d installments of \u201cThe Hunger Games\u201d franchise. When he got the script, though, he saw only one role for someone his age, and that job \u2014 playing President Snow \u2014 already belonged to Donald Sutherland<\/a>. <\/p>\n Turns out there never had been a part in the offing. Sutherland was just busy, and Jennifer Lawrence and the rest of the \u201cHunger Games\u201d cast needed someone to rehearse with them for a week. <\/p>\n After recovering from a brief emotional tailspin, Noonan knocked out the script for \u201cThe Shape of Something Squashed\u201d \u2014 then directed and acted in the film. <\/p>\n He was preceded in death by his older brother, \u201cA Coupla White Chicks Sitting Around Talking\u201d playwright John Ford Noonan Jr., who died in 2018 at age 77. <\/p>\n Former Times staff writer Steve Zeitchik contributed to this report. <\/p>\n