On the heels of the death of Nora Ephron and Andy Griffith, another well known face in Hollywood passed away today as Ernest Borgnine died at the age of 95 reports Variety.
Borgnine was the oldest living winner of the Best Actor Oscar and his most recent film role saw him working up until the very end as he played a small part in the 2010 actioner Red. He also recently completed a role in The Man Who Shook the Hand of Vicente Fernandez as the film’s lead, Rex Page, a character bitter about never becoming famous and having lived a life without any meaning. In essence, a character far unlike himself, something he was reminded of in 2011 when he was awarded The Screen Actors Guild Life Achievement Award.
Borgnine’s career is filled with iconic moments and probably the most memorable for me would include The Wild Bunch and From Here to Eternity and his time on the early ’80s television show “Airwolf”. Today’s kids know him as the voice of Mermaid Man on the cartoon “SpongeBob SquarePants” and many, many others know him from “McHale’s Navy”, his Oscar-winning performance in Marty and various other roles including Escape from New York and The Dirty Dozen.
The farthest back my memory of Borgnine can go is Disney’s The Black Hole.
