--- name: "Wilford Brimley" canonical: "https://film.one/person/wilford-brimley" roles: ["Actor"] born: "27 September 1934" died: "1 August 2020" reviewed_on_fi1m: 2 average_fi1m_score: 87 average_as: "actor" average_over: 2 updated: "2026-09-20T06:20:59.032637+00:00" licence: "© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL." --- # Wilford Brimley Actor. Born 27 September 1934 in Salt Lake City, Utah, USA. Died 1 August 2020. ## Details - **Work:** Actor - **Born:** 27 September 1934, Salt Lake City, Utah, USA - **Died:** 1 August 2020 - **Active:** 1982–1983 - **Also known as:** Anthony Wilford Brimley, A. Wilford Brimley, Wilford A. Brimley, ویلفورد بریملی - **Average Fi1m score:** 87, as actor, over 2 titles - **Elsewhere:** https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilford_Brimley, https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q712180, https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000979/, https://www.themoviedb.org/person/11065 ## Streaming the US now - **Amazon Prime Video:** [*The Thing*](https://film.one/film/the-thing.md) (88), [*Tender Mercies*](https://film.one/film/tender-mercies.md) (86) For United States; add `?region=XX` for another country. ## Fi1m on Wilford Brimley > Wilford Brimley played old men long before he was one, gruff, slow and impossible to impress, and he could settle a scene with a sentence. *The Thing* (1982) gives him the best kind of part for that: a man who has done the sums. Blair sits at a computer in *The Thing* (1982) while the numbers come up, and Wilford Brimley does almost nothing with them. He does not shout and he does not weep. He reads the screen the way a man reads a bill he cannot pay, and it is the film's one scene of pure despair. It frightened us more than anything Carpenter puts in the corridors, because a monster is something we have never met and a tired man doing sums is not. That was Brimley's gift: he could make the quiet version of a feeling land harder than the loud one. He came to acting late and from the side. After the Marines and years as a ranch hand, blacksmith and wrangler, he started in the late 1960s as a stuntman and extra in Westerns, and a run on *The Waltons* (1974–77) led to *The China Syndrome* (1979), where he played Ted Spindler, a plant worker. The next six years fixed him: *Absence of Malice* (1981), *The Thing*, *Tender Mercies* (1983), *The Natural* (1984) and *Cocoon* (1985), his first lead, as Benjamin Luckett, the man in charge of a group of retirees who get their youth back. He kept taking supporting parts into the 2000s and never stopped looking like the oldest man in the cast. He usually was not. He was cast far older than his age for most of his career, and he helped it along, bleaching his hair for *Cocoon* so that a man of fifty could pass for a pensioner. The kit was small and he knew it: the moustache, the slow delivery, the refusal to be impressed. What he did with it was tell the truth to people who did not want to hear it. Harry in *Tender Mercies* says hard things to Robert Duvall, in one of five films they made together; Pop Fisher in *The Natural* is a weary manager who has seen too many seasons, opposite Robert Redford. When *The Firm* (1993) cast him against the grain as William Devasher, a security chief with none of the homespun comfort, the same stillness simply turned cold. Nobody ever pretended he was a leading man, least of all Brimley, who once said: "I'm never the leading man. I never get the girl. And I never get to take my shirt off." He also claimed to know nothing about acting and to have been lucky to get hired. We do not believe him. Start with *The Thing*, where he is a scientist at the end of the world and behaves like one. Then try *Cocoon*, where he is fifty and playing a retiree, and see whether you check. ## Biography Wilford Brimley was an American actor. Born in Salt Lake City, Utah, he served in the US Marine Corps before working in various jobs including as a ranch hand, wrangler and blacksmith. He began his screen career in the late 1960s as an extra and stuntman in Western films. Brimley became a character actor in the 1970s and 1980s. His film roles include Ted Spindler in *The China Syndrome* (1979), Blair in *The Thing* (1982), Pop Fisher in *The Natural* (1984) and Benjamin Luckett in *Cocoon* (1985). He also appeared in *Cocoon: The Return* (1988) and *The Firm* (1993). Brimley was the longtime face of Quaker Oats television advertisements and promoted diabetes education through Liberty Medical commercials. He died in St George, Utah, in 2020. *Sources: imdb.com, en.wikipedia.org, nytimes.com.* ## On Fi1m (2) - *Tender Mercies* (1983), Fi1m 86, as Harry — [page](https://film.one/film/tender-mercies.md) - *The Thing* (1982), Fi1m 88, as Blair — [page](https://film.one/film/the-thing.md) ## Complete filmography (73) Every credit, newest first. Titles without a page can be requested for review on the HTML page. - *I Believe* (2019), as Pastor - *Timber the Treasure Dog* (2016), as Hawk Jones - *Did You Hear About the Morgans?* (2009), as Earl Granger - *Pitcher and the Pin-Up* (2003), as Coach Weaver - *Resurrection Mary* (2002), as Morty - *The Round and Round* (2002), as Governor - *Brigham City* (2001), as Stu - *Crossfire Trail* (2001), as Joe Gill - *The Ballad of Lucy Whipple* (2001), as Deputy Sheriff Ambrose Scraggs - *Comanche* (2000), Actor - *Lunker Lake* (1998), as Storyteller - *Summer of the Monkeys* (1998), as Grandpa Sam Ferrans - *CHAPTER PERFECT* (1998), as Hawkins - *Progeny* (1998), as Dr. David Wetherly - *A Place to Grow* (1998), as Jake - *All My Friends Are Cowboys* (1998), as Charlie - *In & Out* (1997), as Frank Brackett - *My Fellow Americans* (1996), as Joe Hollis - *Last of the Dogmen* (1995), as Narrator (uncredited) - *The Good Old Boys* (1995), as C.C. Tarpley - *OP Center* (1995), as Adm. Troy Davis - *OP Center* (1995), series, as Adm. Troy Davis - *Mutant Species* (1995), as Devro - *Heaven Sent* (1994), as Security Guard - *The Firm* (1993), as William Devasher - *Hard Target* (1993), as Uncle Douvee - *Walker, Texas Ranger* (1993), series, as Burt Mueller - *Homicide: Life on the Street* (1993), series, as Harry 'The Admiral' Prentice — Fi1m 89, [page](https://film.one/tv/homicide-life-on-the-street.md) - *The Boys of Twilight* (1992), series, as Bill Huntoon - *Where The Red Fern Grows Part 2* (1992), as Grandpa Will - *Blood River* (1991), as U.S. Marshal Winston Patrick Culler - *Eternity* (1990), as King / Eric - *Seinfeld* (1989), series, as Postmaster General Henry Atkins — Fi1m 90, [page](https://film.one/tv/seinfeld.md) - *Billy the Kid* (1989), as Gov. Lew Wallace - *Cocoon: The Return* (1988), as Ben Luckett - *End of the Line* (1987), as Will Haney - *Jackals* (1986), as Sheriff Mitchell - *Our House* (1986), series, as Gus Witherspoon - *Act of Vengeance* (1986), as Tony Boyle - *Thompson's Last Run* (1986), as Red Haines - *Shadows on the Wall* (1986), as Floyd Buckman - *Ewoks: The Battle for Endor* (1985), as Noa Briqualon - *Remo Williams: The Adventure Begins* (1985), as Harold Smith - *Murder in Space* (1985), as Dr. Andrew McCallister - *Cocoon* (1985), as Benjamin Luckett - *Country* (1984), as Otis - *The Natural* (1984), as Pop Fisher - *The Stone Boy* (1984), as George Jansen - *The Hotel New Hampshire* (1984), as Iowa Bob - *Harry & Son* (1984), as Tom Keach - *Tough Enough* (1983), as Bill Long - *High Road to China* (1983), as Bradley Tozer - *10 to Midnight* (1983), as Clem Malone - *Tender Mercies* (1983), as Harry — Fi1m 86, [page](https://film.one/film/tender-mercies.md) - *The Thing* (1982), as Blair — Fi1m 88, [page](https://film.one/film/the-thing.md) - *Death Valley* (1982), as The Sheriff - *Absence of Malice* (1981), as James J. Wells - *Joe Dancer: The Big Black Pill* (1981), as Wally Haskell - *Borderline* (1980), as Scooter Jackson - *Rodeo Girl* (1980), as Bingo Gibbs - *Roughnecks* (1980), as Willie Clayton - *Brubaker* (1980), as Rogers - *Amber Waves* (1980), as Pete Alberts - *The Electric Horseman* (1979), as Farmer - *The Wild Wild West Revisited* (1979), as President Grover Cleveland - *The China Syndrome* (1979), as Ted Spindler - *The Awakening Land* (1978), series, as Jude McWhirter - *The Oregon Trail* (1977), series, Actor - *How the West Was Won* (1977), series, as Sheriff Daniels - *Kung Fu* (1972), series, as Blacksmith - *The Waltons* (1972), series, as Horace Brimley - *Lawman* (1971), as Marc Corman (uncredited) - *True Grit* (1969), as Minor Role (uncredited) ## Gallery - ![Wilford Brimley](https://film.one/media/person/95375/gallery-b8508f5f04cf.jpg) Wilford Brimley — Marc Majcher, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons (https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8f/Wilford_Brimley_talking_%28cropped%29_%282%29.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=thumbnail_unscaled) - ![Wilford Brimley on October 22, 2012](https://film.one/media/person/95375/gallery-62819c4230f3.jpg) Wilford Brimley on October 22, 2012 — Marc Majcher, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons (https://thumb.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/f5/Wilford_Brimley.jpg/1280px-Wilford_Brimley.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=thumbnail) - ![Actor Wilford Brimley (2012)](https://film.one/media/person/95375/gallery-19fbe109c7a3.jpg) Actor Wilford Brimley (2012) — Marc Majcher, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons (https://thumb.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/72/Wilford_Brimley_talking.jpg/1280px-Wilford_Brimley_talking.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=thumbnail) - ![Wilford Brimley](https://film.one/media/person/95375/gallery-3dddf38ab683.jpg) Wilford Brimley — Image via TMDB - ![Wilford Brimley](https://film.one/media/person/95375/gallery-04685b2c903b.jpg) Wilford Brimley — Image via TMDB - ![Wilford Brimley](https://film.one/media/person/95375/gallery-fda36d45306d.jpg) Wilford Brimley — Image via TMDB --- © Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL. Canonical: https://film.one/person/wilford-brimley