American actor Clarence Gilyard Jr, a popular well-known actor whose credits include the blockbuster films Die Hard and Top Gun and the hit television series Matlock and Walker, Texas Ranger, has passed away on Monday at the age of 66.
His death has been confirmed this week by the University of Las Vegas (UNLV), Nevada, through an Instagram post, where the actor was also a professor of acting at the Faculty of Fine Arts.
"Professor Gilyard was a beacon of light and strength to everyone around him at UNLV," said the school's film director, Heather Addison, in a statement. "Every time we asked him how he was doing, he would cheerfully declare that was 'Blessed!' But we are truly the ones who were blessed to be his colleagues and students for so many years," she added.
The Washington native actor had a prolific career that kicked off in the 1980s with appearances on Diff'rent Strokes, The Facts of Life and other shows. Subsequently, he starred in two of the most successful films of the decade: Top Gun, in which he played Sundown, a flight officer, and Die Hard, in which he portrayed a computer-savvy villain.
However, Clarence Gilyard Jr. was mainly known in Spain during the 1990s for having participated in almost 200 episodes of the popular Walker, Texas Ranger, a nine-season series that began broadcasting in 1993. In the series , represented Trivette, a character who accompanied Walker, played by Chuck Norris, to fight crime in Dallas and the state of Texas.
During the eighties, he also stood out for work on other projects such as the Matlock series, where he played a criminal lawyer alongside Andy Griffith; or the sequel The Karate Kid: Part II. Recently, it is worth noting his appearance in a theatrical adaptation of the Oscar-winning classic Driving Miss Daisy or a curious reappearance in an advertisement for car batteries in which, together with Bruce Willis, both interpret their respective characters from Die Hard.
