David Huddleston, the veteran character actor best known for his role as the eponymous millionaire in the Coen brothers' classic The Big Lebowski, has died in Santa Fe, New Mexico. He was 85 and had been battling kidney and liver disease.
Huddleston's stage and screen career spanned six decades and included such TV series as The Waltons, The Wonder Years, Gilmore Girls, The West Wing, Star Trek: The Next Generation and Gunsmoke.
On the big screen he appeared in Blazing Saddles, Frantic, Capricorn One and Smokey and the Bandit II and had the starring role opposite Dudley Moore and John Lithgow in 1985's Santa Claus: The Movie. In 2014, Huddleston told newspaper The Santa Fe New Mexican that his role as Mayor Olsen Johnson in Blazing Saddles was "probably the most fun I ever had on a set".
But it is for his performance as cantankerous schemer Jeffrey Lebowski opposite Jeff Bridges in The Big Lebowski that Huddleston will be best remembered by audiences around the world.
The 1998 noir caper featured some superb exchanges between the two actors but it was not their first movie together: Huddleston also starred with Bridges in the 1972 western Bad Company.
He is survived by his wife of 32 years, Sarah Koeppe, and his son Michael Huddleston, a character actor.
