Sam Bottoms, a film and television actor who played the role of California surfer-turned-soldier Lance Johnson in Francis Ford Coppola’s 1979 Vietnam War epic “Apocalypse Now,” has died. He was 53.
Mr. Bottoms died Tuesday at his home in Los Angeles of glioblastoma multiforme, a virulent brain cancer, said his wife, Laura Bickford.
The brother of actors Timothy, Joseph and Ben Bottoms, Sam made his screen debut as a teenager in Peter Bogdanovich’s 1971 film “The Last Picture Show,” in which Timothy played one of the leads. Sam played Billy, the mute, mentally handicapped boy.
Then 15, he hadn’t expected to be cast in the movie.
He had traveled from home in Santa Barbara, Calif., to Archer City, Texas, to simply observe the filming, he recalled in a 1993 interview with the Houston Chronicle.
He was sitting on a street corner drinking a Dr Pepper with his brother when a station wagon rolled by and stopped.
“Peter Bogdanovich gets out,” Mr. Bottoms recalled, “and says, ‘What’s your name?'”
When he said he had come to visit his brother, Bogdanovich surprised him by asking, “Do you want to be in the movie?”
Since then, Mr. Bottoms appeared in 30 films, including Clint Eastwood’s “The Outlaw Josey Wales” and “Bronco Billy.” More recently, he appeared in “SherryBaby,” “Shopgirl” and “Seabiscuit.”
He also made guest appearances on TV series such as “NYPD Blue,” “The X Files,” “Murder, She Wrote” and “21 Jump Street.” And he played Cal Trask in the 1981 TV miniseries “East of Eden.”
Mr. Bottoms was 20 in 1976 when he was cast to play surfer Lance Johnson in “Apocalypse Now,” in which he was one of the young soldiers who accompanied Capt. Willard (Martin Sheen) upriver in a gunboat for his rendezvous with Marlon Brando’s renegade Col. Kurtz. That comes after Mr. Bottoms’ scenes with Robert Duvall’s surf-obsessed Lt. Col. Kilgore, who memorably calls in a napalm strike on the tree line behind a coastal village with a primo surf spot.
Mr. Bottoms spent a year and a half filming the movie in the Philippines.
“Francis is a great general, he’s a Gen. Patton, a Gen. Sherman, a great leader,” Mr. Bottoms said in a 2001 interview with the Los Angeles Times. “I was his loyal soldier. I would have done anything he asked. I did, and I’m surprised that I came out of it alive.”
Coppola told the Times on Wednesday that in casting young actors to play soldiers in the movie, he had been impressed with Mr. Bottoms during improvisational sessions.
“He was a handsome, tall young man and very sweet-natured and seemed to be right for that part,” said Coppola. “He, Larry Fishburne and Fred Forrest were like a young family almost to me [during filming], and they went through thick and thin uncomplainingly. We all admired them.
“Sam was an especially likable, beautiful young man. He was quiet and undemanding and always anxious to help and had a nice smile.”
Mr. Bottoms later played a lieutenant in Coppola’s “Gardens of Stone,” a 1987 military film set during the Vietnam era.
In addition to his wife, he is survived by his two daughters from his first marriage to Susan Arnold; his three brothers and his parents.
