R.I.P. ‘All My Children’s Matthew Cowles

Actor and playwright Matthew Cowles, best known for creating and playing the villainous Billy Clyde Tuggle on ABC’s All My Children, died May 22. He was 69. Cowles’s long-running stint on the ABC soap ran began in 1977 as he popped in and out of the Pine Valley soap through 1990, when the Tuggle character was presumed dead in a bomb explosion. He came back a final time to reprise the role in 2013. Cowles nabbed two Daytime Emmy Awards for his turn as the notorious thug and also starred on CBS soap The Bold and the Beautiful for a season. In features Cowles made his film debut in 1969’s Me, Natalie with Patty Duke and a young Al Pacino. He also acted in The Happy Hooker, Slap Shot, The World According to Garp, The Money Pit, Brenda Starr, The Juror, Nurse Betty, City By The Sea, and Shutter Island. The son of theater and Broadway producer Chandler Cowles, Matthew Cowles was married to fellow All My Children actress Kathleen Dezina before his longtime marriage to actress Christine Baranski, whom he wed in 1983. Cowles’ manager Tsu Tsu Stanton confirmed his death via Twitter.