Vale: Hal Holbrook

Esteemed US actor Hal Holbrook, best known for All the President’s Men, and playing Mark Twain, has died, aged 95.

Holbrook died on January 23 in Beverly Hills, his personal assistant, Joyce Cohen, told The New York Times.

Holbrook’s career spanned over 60 years and saw him portray Lincoln in the miniseries of the same name and also in the 1980s TV hits North & South and North & South: Book II.

He won four Emmy Awards for acting, his first in 1970 for The Bold Ones: The Senator. Amongst many TV credits were George Washington, The West Wing, That Certain Summer, Designing Women, Evening Shade, The Sopranos, Our Town, Sons of Anarchy and The Event.

He made a deep impression playing Deep Throat in All the President’s Men — it was he who intoned the famous words “Follow the money!” Other film credits included Capricorn One, Magnum Force, Wall Street, Into the Wild, The Kidnapping of the President, The Star Chamber and Savannah.

Ed Sullivan saw him perform “Mark Twain Tonight” and gave the young actor his first national exposure on his television show in 1956. It was a stage role he would recreate many times, winning best actor Tony in 1966. He returned to Broadway and appeared in it more than 2,200 times.

“Mark Twain gets me out of the bed in the morning,” Holbrook told the Los Angeles Times in 2014.

“He literally fires me up. I don’t have to fire myself up, all I have to do is lay there and think about what’s going on in my country and the world and run over some of the Twain I am going to do.”

Source: Variety, Hollywood Reporter