Vale: George Gaynes

US actor George Gaynes, best known for Punky Brewster and Police Academy, has died, aged 98.

He died at his daughter’s home in Washington on Monday.

Gaynes starred as Cmdt. Eric Lassard in all seven of the Police Academy movies opposite Steve Guttenberg and Bubba Smith, as well as in a TV spin-off in 1998.

He is also well known as Henry Warnimont on Punky Brewster, who found an abandoned little girl (Soleil Moon Frye) in an empty apartment and became first her foster parent and then her adoptive father.

Other TV credits included General Hospital, Cheers, Hawaii Five-O, Columbo, Chicago Hope and Hogan’s Heroes.

Gaynes is also well remembered as a soap opera star who had a crush on Dustin Hoffman in 1982’s Tootsie.

Source: The Wrap