Bernie Casey, Football Star Turned Actor, Poet and Painter, Dies at 78

Actor Bernie Casey, who appeared in numerous films after a career as a standout NFL wide receiver, has died. He was 78.

Casey, who also starred in Cleopatra Jones and several other blaxploitation movies of the 1970s, died Tuesday after a brief illness at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, his representative told The Hollywood Reporter.

Not long after he unexpectedly retired from the Los Angeles Rams, Casey portrayed Chicago Bears player J.C. Caroline in the 1971 ABC telefilm Brian's Song. In Brothers (1977), Casey distinguished himself by portraying a thinly veiled version of George Jackson, a member of the Black Panther Party who was killed in San Quentin in 1971.

Casey played a heroic former slave and train robber in Martin Scorsese's Boxcar Bertha (1972); CIA agent Felix Leiter (a recurring Bond film character) in Never Say Never Again (1983); fraternity president U.N. Jefferson in Revenge of the Nerds (1984); and Col. Rhumbus, tasked with training Dan Aykroyd and Chevy Chase in John Landis' Spies Like Us (1985). He also wrote, directed, starred in and produced The Dinner (1997).

A true Renaissance man, Casey also was a published poet as well as a painter whose work was exhibited in galleries around the world.

At: http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/bernie-casey-dead-actor-nfl-910749

Bernie Casey, 1939-2017.