Everything about Richard Farnsworth totally explained
Richard W. Farnsworth (
September 1,
1920–
October 6,
2000) was an
Oscar-nominated
American actor and
stuntman. After toiling in films beginning in 1937, he finally achieved stardom in the 1982 film
The Grey Fox.
Early life
Farnsworth was born in
Los Angeles, California to a housewife mother and an
engineer father. He was raised during the
Great Depression. He lived with his aunt, mother and two sisters in downtown Los Angeles after his father died when he was seven years old. He had been working as a stable hand at a polo field in Los Angeles for $6 a week.
Career
When he was offered a chance to make $7 a day plus a box lunch, he started his career as a stuntman. When he was seventeen, he started by riding horses in films in 1937, in
The Adventures of Marco Polo with
Gary Cooper. He performed in several horse-riding stunts in such films as the
Marx Brothers'
A Day at the Races (1937) and
Gunga Din (1939). What differentiated Farnsworth from other western actors was his gradual step into acting from stunt work. He made uncredited appearances in numerous films, including
Gone with the Wind (1939),
Red River (1948),
The Wild One (1953), and
The Ten Commandments (1956). He was on the set of
Spartacus (1960) for eleven months. He laughed when he said he didn't look like a
gladiator, but drove a chariot. However, it wasn't until 1963 that he finally received his first acting credit.
Farnsworth's acting career was largely in
Western films, although he did appear in the
television miniseries Roots. In 1985, he appeared in the
Canadian miniseries
Anne of Green Gables, winning a
Gemini Award for his performance as Matthew Cuthbert. He also won a
Genie Award in 1983 for his breakthrough performance as
stagecoach robber
Bill Miner in the Canadian film
The Grey Fox. Another of his prominent roles was as a suspicious sheriff in the film version of
Stephen King's
Misery.
In 1979, Farnsworth was nominated for the
Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for
Comes a Horseman, and in 1999 he was nominated for
Best Actor for
The Straight Story. When David Lynch asked to see if he wanted to be in the simple but emotional movie
The Straight Story, Farnsworth had no idea who he was. Farnsworth didn't like violence or swearing, and so his agent was very careful and told him that Lynch was the director who made
The Elephant Man. Fortunately, he liked this movie, even though it had been made 20 years prior. When Farnsworth and Lynch spoke, he again reiterated his dislikes. Lynch reassured him there would be none of that in this movie. The role, a rarity for a man his age, showed Hollywood that "there's a lot of talent out there".
Farnsworth has a star on the
Hollywood Walk of Fame at 1560 Vine Street. In 1997, he was inducted into the
Western Performers Hall of Fame at the
National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum in
Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.
Personal life and death
Farnsworth was married to Margaret "Maggie" Hill for 38 years. She is the mother of his two children, Diamond and Missy. She passed away in 1985. Toward the end of his life, he met Jewly Van Valin on the bridle trail, a stewardess 35 years his junior. Farnsworth and Van Valin started riding together, and were engaged. He was well liked and busy in his community of Lincoln, New Mexico, where he'd a sixty-acre ranch, and moved after his wife's death. Farnsworth was the spokesperson for the Lincoln County Cowboy Symposium, an annual event in Ruidoso, NM. He made a video with cowboy poet Waddie Mitchell called
Buckaroo Bard. He also helped with the Last Great Cattle Drive of This Millennium in 1999. Shortly before his passing, he was presented with an award from the Governor of New Mexico for Excellence and Achievement in the Arts.
Farnsworth was diagnosed and treated for prostate cancer in the early 90s. By 1999, he'd been diagnosed as having terminal bone cancer. He made the movie
The Straight Story while in considerable pain.
Farnsworth shot himself with a single bullet at his ranch in
Lincoln, New Mexico. He is interred with his wife Margaret in the
Forest Lawn, Hollywood Hills Cemetery in
Los Angeles, California.
Partial filmography
Further Information
Get more info on 'Richard Farnsworth'.
|
External Link Exchanges
Do you know how hard it is to get a link from a large encyclopaedia? Well we're different and will prove it. To get a link from us just add the following HTML to your site on a relevant page:
<a href="http://richard_farnsworth.totallyexplained.com">Richard Farnsworth Totally Explained</a>
Then simply click through this link from your web page. Our crawlers will verify your link, extract the title of your web page and instantly add a link back to it. If you like you can remove the words Totally Explained and embed the link in article text.
As long as your link remains in place, we'll keep our link to you right here. Please play fair - our crawlers are watching. Your site must be closely related to this one's topic. Any kind of spamming, dubious practises or removing the link will result in your link from us being dropped and, potentially, your whole site being banned. |
