Actor Dabney Coleman, who specialised in smarmy villains such as the chauvinist boss in 9 to 5 and the nasty TV director in Tootsie has died aged 92.
Coleman died Thursday local time at his home in Santa Monica, his daughter Quincy Coleman said in a statement to The Associated Press.
She said he "took his last earthly breath peacefully and exquisitely."
For two decades Coleman laboured in movies and TV shows as a talented but largely unnoticed performer.
That changed in 1976 when he was cast in the satirical soap opera Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman as the corrupt mayor of the hamlet of Fernwood.
Known for his ample black moustache, Coleman went on to make his mark in numerous popular films, including as a stressed out computer scientist in War Games, Tom Hanks's father in You've Got Mail and a fire fighting official in The Towering Inferno.
However, he may be best known for the 1980 hit 9 to 5, where he was the "sexist, egotistical, lying, hypocritical bigot" boss who tormented his unappreciated female underlings — Jane Fonda, Lily Tomlin and Dolly Parton — until they turned the tables on him.
Opposite Dustin Hoffman in Tootsie, he also played the obnoxious director of a daytime soap opera that Hoffman's character joins by pretending to be a woman.
Other hits included his role as Principal Prickly in the animated show Recces, Inspector Gadget, Stuart Little, and The Muppets Take Manhattan.
Actor Ben Stiller took to social media platform X to remember the character actor.
"The great Dabney Coleman literally created, or defined, really — in a uniquely singular way — an archetype as a character actor. He was so good at what he did it's hard to imagine movies and television of the last 40 years without him," he wrote.
Coleman won a Golden Globe for The Slap Maxwell Story and an Emmy Award for best supporting actor in the 1987 small screen legal drama Sworn to Silence.
Twice divorced, Coleman is survived by four children, Meghan, Kelly, Randy and Quincy.
AP