Allen Garfield Dies: Veteran Film Actor Had COVID-19 Complications, Was 80

Veteran film character actor Allen Garfield has died from COVID-19 complications. He was residing at the Motion Picture Home in Woodland Hills, CA. at the time of his death at age 80.

Garfield’s long résumé includes such films as The Conversation, The Candidate, The Stunt Man and Nashville.  

Actress Ronee Blakely wrote on Twitter: “RIP Allen Garfield, the great actor who played my husband in “Nashville”, has died today of Covid; I hang my head in tears; condolences to family and friends; I will post more later; cast and crew, sending love.”

Garfield’s career started in 1968 with Putney Swope, kicking off a running list of work in which Garfield always seemed to play a nervous character.

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His health deteriorated in recent years. Garfield suffered a stroke as he was set to appear in Roman Polanski’s The Ninth Gate (1999), then had another one in 2004.

Born Allen Goorwitz on Nov. 22, 1939, in Newark, NJ, he used his real name in several films, including The Brink’s Job (1978) and One from the Heart (1981). .

Garfield studied with Lee Strasberg and Elia Kazan at the Actors Studio in New York and had several stage appearances.

His résumé also includes the 1971 Woody Allen film Bananas, Sidney Poitier starrer The Organization, Francis Ford Coppola’s The Conversation (1974) and The Cotton Club (1984) and Wim Wenders’ A State of Things (1982) and Until the End of the World (1991).

He also was in Louis B. Mayer in Gable and Lombard (1976) and played Police Chief Harold Lutz in Beverly Hills Cop II (1987), among other films.

His sister, Lois Goorwitz, survives him. No memorial plans have been announced.