Renowned actor, producer and director Norman Lloyd, whose Hollywood career spanned eight decades, has died. He was 106.
The Golden Age Hollywood star passed away at his home in Los Angeles on Tuesday, May 11th. His friend, producer Dean Hargrove confirmed his death in a statement.“His third act was really the best time of his life,” Hargroves said, via Variety.
Norman Lloyd carved out an indelible legacy. He first cut his teeth on the theatre, after he was asked by Orson Welles and John Houseman to join their Mercury Theatre in the mid-1930s. Lloyd played Cinna the Poet in Welles’ 1937 anti-fascist adaptation of Julius Caesar.
Lloyd would go on to follow Orson Welles to Los Angeles to act in his debut, Heart of Darkness, ultimately the project never came to fruition because of budget woes. Lloyd returned to New York and declined to work in Welles’ next project, Citizen Kane, a move he admits, “I have always regretted.”
In 1942, Lloyd was scouted by Alfred Hitchcock to play the titular character in his 1942 film, Saboteur. The creative partnership between the pair would see Lloyd act in 1945’s Spellbound. He also went on to act as an associate producer on Hitchock’s TV Series, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, a move he credited as career-saving, in addition to producing and directed several episodes of The Hitchcock Hour.
Other film work included appearances in Jean Renoir’s The Southerner, Charlie Chaplin’s Limelight, Martin Scorsese’s The Age of Innocence, Peter Weir’s Dead Poet’s Society, The Green Years, The Black Book, and Audrey Rose.
As active behind-the-camera as he was in front, Lloyd produced a number of beloved television series, including, Journey to the Unknown, The Name of the Game and Tales of the Unexpected.
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Lloyd’s autobiography, Stages, was published in 1993. His wife, Broadway actress Peggy Craven Lloyd, to whom he was married for 75 years, died in 2011. She was 98.
My dear friend Norman Lloyd has died.
He was 106. He would quote things Chaplin, Hitchcock, and Judd Apatow said to him – in the same sentence. He saw a his first World Series game in 1928 (“Babe Ruth tore his pants! We roared!”) and his last in 2017.
He was intent on 107. pic.twitter.com/I9NbhTHI21
— Keith Olbermann (@KeithOlbermann) May 11, 2021
What a career. From Welles to Apatow. #RIP Norman Lloyd. https://t.co/sDCRpgeXgt
— Ben Stiller (@RedHourBen) May 11, 2021
