Terminator and Gremlins actor Dick Miller dies at age 90
Character actor Dick Miller, who appeared in The Terminator and Gremlins, among dozens of other movies, died Wednesday in Toluca Lake, Calif. He was 90.
Miller appeared in several films directed by Roger Corman, including 1959’s A Bucket of Blood and 1960’s The Little Shop of Horrors. He later became a favorite of filmmaker Joe Dante, a Corman protégé, who cast Miller in 1978’s Piranha, 1981’s The Howling, both Gremlins films, and The ‘Burbs, among other projects. Miller also appeared in The Terminator and Chopping Mall and was the subject of the 2014 documentary, That Guy Dick Miller.
Baby Driver director Edgar Wright and Doctor Strange screenwriter and Junkfood Cinema podcast cohost C. Robert Cargill also remembered the actor.
“RIP Dick Miller, surely the king of character actors,” Wright wrote on Twitter. “A friendly, funny face in Gremlins (1&2), Piranha, the original Little Shop Of Horrors, Not Of This Earth, After Hours & my personal beatnik fav, Walter Paisley in ‘A Bucket Of Blood’. Any role of his was cult movie nirvana.”
“Dick Miller was the patron saint of Junkfood Cinema,” wrote Cargill. “Brian (Salisbury, Junkfood Cinema’s other host) and I did an in depth interview with him 5 years ago at the very beginning of JFC. We only had a half hour, but Dick wanted to keep going. Went over an hour. He LOVED talking about films he hadn’t thought about in 40yrs.”
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