Jack Betts, a veteran character actor known for his roles in Spider-Man and the Django spaghetti Western films, has passed away.
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Betts’ nephew, Dean Sullivan, told The Hollywood Reporter that the actor died in his sleep at his home in Los Osos, California, on Thursday. He was 96.
A familiar face to ’90s TV and Film, the debonair Betts also guest-starred on shows like Friends and made appearances in cult favorite comedies like 1999’s Office Space. He also played an aged Boris Karloff in 1998’s Gods and Monsters.
THR also reported that Betts lived with Everybody Loves Raymond actress Doris Roberts before she died in 2016. They were close friends and often attended events together starting in the late 1980s.
Betts, born in New Jersey, moved to Miami with his family at the age of 10. His passion for acting began after watching Laurence Olivier in the 1939 film Wuthering Heights, according to THR. He studied theater at the University of Miami and later started his career with a Broadway adaptation of Shakespeare’s Richard III.
From there, Betts landed the lead role as the avenging title character in Franco Giraldi’s Sugar Colt (1966), where he was first credited as Hunt Powers. This film marked the start of his career in spaghetti Westerns, starring in about 15 of them through 1973, including Halleluja for Django (1967) and One Damned Day at Dawn… Django Meets Sartana! (1970).
Jack Betts Had a Deep Bench of Soap Opera and TV Credits
Betts played Dr. Ivan Kipling at Llanview Hospital on ABC’s One Life to Live from 1979 to 1985. His soap opera career also included roles on General Hospital, The Edge of Night, The Doctors, Another World, All My Children, Search for Tomorrow, Guiding Light, Loving, and Generations. He also appeared in popular TV shows like Seinfeld, Frasier, and Everybody Loves Raymond.
However, Betts might be best known for playing Henry Balkan in Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man (2002). In the film, his character works at Oscorp Technologies alongside Willem Dafoe’s Norman Osborn, who later becomes the Green Goblin.
Betts went on to appear in several TV series, including My Name Is Earl, Recovery Road, and, most recently, Good Trouble in 2019, per his IMDB page.
Betts is survived by his nephew, his nieces Lynee and Gail, and his sister Joan, who will turn 100 in November, according to THR.