Columbo actor Peter Falk dies at 83
Actor Peter Falk, who played one of the most beloved detectives in TV history, dies peacefully at his home in Beverly Hills.
Family members said the actor died on Thursday night at his Beverly Hills home.
No cause of death was specified but he has suffered in recent years from dementia and Alzheimer’s disease.
New York born Falk, who played Columbo for 30 years, has also starred in 50 movies during a career that spanned half a century of acting.
He was nominated for two Oscars; appeared in original stage productions of works by Paddy Chayefsky, Neil Simon and Arthur Miller, worked with the directors Frank Capra, John Cassavetes, Blake Edwards and Mike Nichols, and co-starred with the likes of Frank Sinatra, Bette Davis and Jason Robards.
But he will be best remembered for his primetime role as Columbo, a lieutenant in the Los Angeles Police Department who had a “mind like Einstein but sounded like the box boy at Food giant,” as Falk recalls in his memoir.
Falk said Columbo’s personality matched his own, writing: “I saw a man who had an obsessive streak,”
“I saw that behind the raincoat was someone who couldn’t sleep until he found the answer.”
Born Sept. 16, 1927, in New York to Jewish parents of East European descent, Peter Michael Falk was raised in Ossining.
At age 3, his right eye had to be removed because of cancer.
He studied at the New School for Social Research in New York and later received a master’s degree in public administration from Syracuse University.
After bombing in his New York debut, he was cast in a hit production of Eugene O’Neil’s The Iceman Cometh, which proved to be his big break.
After years in live television dramas, he played a Jewish gangster in the 1960 movie Murder, Inc. and was nominated for an Academy Award.
A year later, Falk’s comedic role as a gangster in Frank Capra’s Pocketful of Miracles earned him his second – and last – Oscar nomination.
Falk is survived by his wife of 34 years, Shera, and two daughters from a previous marriage.