Being a character actor is never a glamorous job. If you’re lucky, you get your name on the opening credits but you don’t get the nice paycheck the stars receive. However, if you’re lucky, you get to appear in a popular movie or franchise that people will remember you.
Charles Cyphers got that chance multiple times thanks in part to his friendship and collaboration with John Carpenter. He appeared in the original Assault on Precinct 13 as Starker, one of the ill-fated police officers gunned down.
Maybe it was because he looked like what a cop should look like in the 1970s, he was later cast as Sheriff Leigh Brackett in the iconic horror classic Halloween. Even though it was a standard character actor role, he got to deliver the classic line: “It’s Halloween. Everyone’s entitled to one good scare.”
He would later reprise this role in Halloween II, even though his character leaves after a third way in. In Halloween Kills (which ignores the continuity of Halloween II), he reprised the role again and said the line again before he is killed by The Shape, aka Michael Myers. It was his final film role before his death earlier this month following a brief illness.
But if you’re going to be remembered for one thing, it’s best to go out on the role you’ll be most famous for. He also appeared in other Carpenter movies as The Fog and Escape from New York where he played the Secretary of State. “He was an early and frequent collaborator with me on my early movies. A kind man, he was a friend. I shall miss him,” Carpenter wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter.
Other roles included being cast in the notorious Grizzly II, filmed in the early 1980s, yet it spent decades in post production before it was released in 2020. The movie became infamous at one time because some people alleged it was just an urban legend. With early roles by Charlie Sheen and future Oscar winners George Clooney and Laura Dern, the movie became held up for completion over financial issues.
Cyphers would appear with Sheen again in the sports comedy Major League. His role was as Charlie Donovan, the general manager of the Cleveland Indians, who unwillingly goes along with the owner’s attempt to have a losing team so she can relocate the franchise to Florida. Cyphers showed off his comedic jobs when his character in a final defiance, blows raspberries at Margaret Whitton’s character, when she tells him to sit down while he cheers and claps during a homerun.
He later worked with Sheen’s brother, Emilio Estevez, on National Lampoon’s Loaded Weapon 1 during a scene parodying Sharon Stone’s interrogation scene in Basic Instinct.
On TV, he appeared in shows such as Hill Street Blues, Starsky & Hutch, The Six Million Dollar Man as well as the epic miniseries Roots. Altogether, imdb.com indicates he had about 100 acting credits throughout his career from 1972 to 2021 where he retired and lived in Tucson, Ariz. He was 85.
What is your favorite role of his? Please comment.
Zane Says 