Robert Wallace Foster Jr.[1][2] (July 13, 1941 – October 11, 2019), known professionally as Robert Forster, was an American actor. He made his screen debut as Private L.G. Williams in John Huston's Reflections in a Golden Eye (1967), followed by a starring role as news reporter John Casellis in the landmark[3] New Hollywood film Medium Cool (1969). For his portrayal of bail bondsman Max Cherry in Quentin Tarantino's Jackie Brown (1997), he was nominated for Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor.
Forster played a variety of both leading and supporting roles in over 100 films, including Captain Dan Holland in The Black Hole (1979), Detective David Madison in Alligator (1980), Abdul Rafai in The Delta Force (1986), Colonel Partington in Me, Myself & Irene (2000), Scott Thorson in The Descendants (2011), General Edward Clegg in Olympus Has Fallen (2013) and its sequel London Has Fallen (2016), Norbert Everhardt in What They Had (2018), and Sheriff Hadley in The Wolf of Snow Hollow (2020).
He also had prominent roles in television series such as Banyon (1971–73), Nakia (1974), Karen Sisco (2003–04), Heroes (2007–08), the third season of Twin Peaks (2017) and the Breaking Bad episode "Granite State" as Ed "The Disappearer" Galbraith, for which he won the Saturn Award for Best Guest Starring Role on Television. He reprised the role in the film El Camino: A Breaking Bad Movie (2019) and Better Call Saul (2020).
Forster was born and raised in Rochester, New York.[4] His mother was Italian American, while his father was of English and Irish descent.[5] He earned a Bachelor's Degree in Psychology from the University of Rochester. He performed in a number of plays in college, and decided to become an actor.[citation needed]
Forster added an "R" to his surname as there was another member of the Screen Actors Guild named Robert Foster.[2]
Forster made his Broadway debut in 1965 in Mrs. Dally Had a Lover, opposite Arlene Francis and Ralph Meeker.[6][7] He also starred in productions of Come Blow Your Horn, The Big Knife, and The Glass Menagerie.[8]
Forster's movie career began strongly, when John Huston cast him in the important role of Private Williams in Reflections in a Golden Eye (1967), opposite Elizabeth Taylor and Marlon Brando; there was a scene where Forster rode naked on a horse which became famous.[9] Forster also appeared in episodes of the TV series N.Y.P.D., Judd for the Defense and Premiere, the latter also featuring Dustin Hoffman and Sally Kellerman. Forster was then cast in another key role in an important movie: part-Indian Army scout Nick Tana in Robert Mulligan's The Stalking Moon (1968); he was billed third, after Gregory Peck and Eva Marie Saint.
Forster had a key support role in Justine (1969), directed by George Cukor and starring Dirk Bogarde, which was a huge flop. He starred in the critically acclaimed[citation needed] film Medium Cool (1969), which was also a big hit commercially.[10]
Forster played a tormented priest in Pieces of Dreams (1970) and a student filmmaker in Cover Me Babe (1970), which was a box office flop.[11] He was cast in the pilot for a TV series Banyon, playing a private eye in late 1930s in Los Angeles. then starred in Journey Through Rosebud which was not released theatrically. He directed for the Rochester Community Theatre.[12]
A year after the pilot for Banyon was made, it was picked up for a series but only had a short run. After this cancellation Forster said his career "started to slip and then it slipped and then it slipped."[9]
In 1973, he briefly returned to Broadway playing Stanley Kowalski in a revival of A Streetcar Named Desire, opposite Julie Harris.[13][14] He also played Juror No. 3 in the first New York stage production of Twelve Angry Men at the Queens Playhouse.[15]
After a support part in The Don Is Dead (1972), Forster starred in the TV movie The Death Squad (1974) then another short-lived TV series, Nakia (1974), playing a Navajo detective.
Forster guest starred on shows such as Medical Story, Gibbsville and Police Story and played the lead in the TV movies Royce (1976), The City (1977) (with Don Johnson), Standing Tall and The Darker Side of Terror (1979). He toured in a stage production of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and appeared in The Sea Horse on stage in Louisville.[16]
Forster moved into lower budgeted movies, starring in Stunts (1977) for Mark L. Lester[17] and Avalanche (1978), the latter opposite Rock Hudson and Mia Farrow for Roger Corman's New World Pictures. Also for New World, Forster had an unbilled cameo in The Lady in Red (1979). This was written by John Sayles and directed by Lewis Teague who later collaborated on Alligator (1980), which starred Forster. He played a key support role in Disney's The Black Hole (1979).
Throughout the 1980s Forster alternated between television and low budget films. He was in the comedy Heartbreak High (1981), and the action films Vigilante (1983), Walking the Edge (1985), The Delta Force (1986), and Counterforce (1988). He wrote, starred in, produced and directed Hollywood Harry (1985), in which he invested all his savings. That year he stated "Not one of my movies made a dime. I've never had anything that approached a hit in my entire career of 15 movies and a lot of TV shows."[18]
Forster appeared in the thrillers Satan's Princess (1989) and The Banker (1989), the mini series Goliath Awaits (1981), and episodes of Magnum, P.I., Tales from the Darkside, Hotel, Crossbow, and Jesse Hawkes. He was in the TV movie Mick and Frankie (1989).
Forster's films by this stage were almost entirely low budget ones: Peacemaker (1990), Checkered Flag (1990), Countdown to Esmeralda Bay (1990), Long Way Back (1990), Committed (1991), Diplomatic Immunity (1991), 29th Street (1991), In Between (1992), In the Shadow of a Killer (1992), Maniac Cop 3: Badge of Silence (1993), South Beach (1993), American Yakuza (1993), Cover Story (1993), Point of Seduction: Body Chemistry III (1993), Scanner Cop II (1995), Guns & Lipstick (1995), The Method (1995), Original Gangstas (1996) (directed by Larry Cohen), Uncle Sam (1996), Hindsight (1996) and American Perfekt (1997).
He appeared in series such as Jake and the Fatman, P.S.I. Luv U, Silk Stalkings, Murder, She Wrote, One West Waikiki and Walker, Texas Ranger.
Forster appeared in Jackie Brown as bail bondsman Max Cherry, which earned him a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor in 1997. Jackie Brown revitalized Forster's career, an effect that occurred for many actors appearing in Quentin Tarantino films.[19] He subsequently had consistent work in the film industry, appearing in Like Mike, Mulholland Drive, Supernova, Me, Myself & Irene (2000), Human Natyre (2001), Confidence (2003), Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle (2003), Lucky Number Slevin (2006), and Firewall (2006).
Forster continued to appear in lower budgeted productions like Night Vision (1997) along with the remakes of Rear Window (1998) and Psycho (1998).
He appeared in the made-for-television movie The Hunt for the BTK Killer, as the detective intent on capturing serial killer Dennis Rader. Forster also played the father of Van on the short-lived Fox series Fastlane.
Forster recorded a public service announcement for Deejay Ra's Hip-Hop Literacy campaign, encouraging reading of books by Elmore Leonard, whose book Rum Punch was adapted as Jackie Brown.
He appeared in the hit NBC series Heroes as Arthur Petrelli, the father of Nathan and Peter Petrelli, as well as the Emmy Award-winning AMC crime drama Breaking Bad as Walter White's new-identity specialist Ed Galbraith (a role he reprised in El Camino: A Breaking Bad Movie and Better Call Saul). He played Bud Baxter, father to Tim Allen's Mike Baxter, on the ABC (later Fox) hit comedy Last Man Standing. Forster was also a motivational speaker.[20]
He was the first choice to play Sheriff Harry S. Truman in David Lynch's Twin Peaks, but had to turn it down due to a prior commitment to a different television pilot, and was replaced by Michael Ontkean. He appeared in Lynch's Mulholland Drive, a pilot for a TV series that was not picked up but was later turned into a critically acclaimed movie, and finally appeared in Twin Peaks, playing the brother of Sheriff Harry S. Truman, Sheriff Frank Truman, in Twin Peaks: The Return, when Ontkean was not available to reprise his role.[21]
About this, Forster said: "David Lynch, what a good guy he is. He wanted to hire me for the original, 25 years ago, for a part, and I was committed to another guy for a pilot that never went. So I didn't do the original Twin Peaks, which would have been a life-changer. It's a gigantic hit if you remember those years, a phenomenon. But I didn't do that. [...] And this time, I got a call from my agents and they said, David Lynch is going to call you. When he called me five minutes later, he said, "I'd like you to come and work with me again." And I said, 'Whatever it is David, here I come!'"[22]
Forster appeared in the TV series Alcatraz.[9]
After Forster's death, he appeared posthumously in El Camino: A Breaking Bad Movie, reprising the character of Ed the "Disappearer" from the Breaking Bad series. He died on the day the movie was released.[19] Four months later, Forster again appeared posthumously as Ed in episode "Magic Man" of the fifth season of Better Call Saul. The episode ended with a dedication to "our friend Robert Forster." He also appeared in an episode "Dynoman and The Volt" of the rebooted Amazing Stories television series before his death; the episode was dedicated to Forster.[23]
Forster was married to June Forster (née Provenzano) from 1966 to 1975. The couple had met at their alma mater, the University of Rochester.[24] The marriage produced three daughters, Elizabeth, Kathrine "Kate", and Maeghen. Robert was married to Zivia Forster from 1978 to 1980. He also had a son, Robert III, from a previous relationship. From 2004 to the time of his death, his longtime partner was Denise Grayson.[2] He was a member of the high-IQ Triple Nine Society.[25]
In June 2019, Forster was diagnosed with a brain tumor, and he died from the disease at his home in Los Angeles on October 11, 2019, at the age of 78.[2][26]
