Wilford Brimley

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Wilford Brimley

Birth name	Allen Wilford Brimley
Born	September 27, 1934 Salt Lake City
Years active	1969 —

Allen Wilford Brimley (b. September 27, 1934, Salt Lake City) is an American character actor.

1 Biography
2 In Popular Culture
3 Selected filmography
4 External links

[edit] Biography

Previously a farmer and rodeo driver, Brimley became famous late in life for appearing in such films as The Hotel New Hampshire and John Carpenter's The Thing.

He often plays gruff or stodgy old men, notably on the 1980s drama series Our House. He got this characterization off to a good start in Absence of Malice, in which he played a small but key role as a curmudgeonly, outspoken James A. Wells, Assistant U.S. Attorney General. He expanded on this characterization in The Natural, as the world-weary manager of a hapless baseball team.

Brimley's appearance in Liberty Medical commercials.

He is known to Star Wars fans as Noa Briqualon in George Lucas' 1985 made for TV movie, entitled Ewoks: The Battle for Endor.

In a change from his "good guy" roles such as those in Our House, he played William Devasher, the ominous head of security for Bendini, Lambert & Locke in 1993's Tom Cruise film, The Firm, based on the novel by John Grisham.

Brimley is also well known for his appearances on commercials, namely a series of commercials he did for Quaker Oats Oatmeal throughout the 1980s and '90s. The Quaker commercials were famous for their slogan: "It's the right thing to do." He also made an appearance on Seinfeld as the U.S. Postmaster General, a takeoff on his role of U.S. Assistant Attorney General in Absence of Malice.

Brimley has made a series of commercials for the diabetes testing-supplies company Liberty Medical - Brimley admonishes viewers to "check your blood sugar and check it often". Brimley is in fact a diabetic in real life.

Outside of film and advertisements, Brimley is also known as an activist opposed to the banning of cockfighting. He has campaigned in Arizona and New Mexico against laws banning cockfighting ([1]).

[edit] In Popular Culture

Brimley's distinctive appearance and manner of speech have lead to a number of parodies over the years.

His diabetes testing commercials have been parodied on Stewie Griffin: The Untold Story ([2]) and on Saturday Night Live, where he was played by John Goodman.

In Family Guy, Stewie Griffin makes an allusion to his room being the site of Wilford Brimley when he runs and ultraviolet light over the room. "This must be where Wilford Brimley was strangled by Bob Crane."

In the Comedy Central show The Colbert Report, Stephen Colbert had a sketch where he plays the voice of Wilford Brimley. In the sketch, "Wilford" calls Colbert very early in the morning, waking him up, having nonsensical conversations, and giving him ideas for Colbert's show. In another sketch "Wilford" calls from Mexico to borrow money to pay his cockfighting debts, but ends when one of the birds attacks his eyes. In the television series Strangers With Candy, Colbert-as-Brimley makes a cameo in the episode Who Wants Cake? as the gruff narrator of the educational audio tape "Retardation: A Celebration."

In the short-lived sketch comedy program The Ben Stiller Show, several sketches involve a Brimley-like character pitching "Grady's Oats," a take-off on the actor's Quaker Oats ads. This depiction, contrasting strongly with the staid Brimley, has the pitchman talking to imaginary oat buds and menacing children in his back yard with a pistol.

During the era of his appearances in commercials for Quaker Oats, the Imus in the Morning Radio Show did hilarious parodies of Brimley's commercials, most of which ended with the sound of the Brimley character unzipping his fly as he proceeded to "plop that thing into a heaping bowl of warm Quaker Oats".