With his square jaw, strong build, and weathered face, Fred Ward seemed like he would be as constant as the rugged topography he resembled, but the prolific character actor passed away recently at 79. Over a career that spanned six decades, Ward lent his strength as a charismatic everyman to myriad genres, making movies as varied from one another as Tremors and The Right Stuff.
Whether he was battling underground worms or blasting into outer space, Ward's best performances were imbued with his signature traits of dependability, sincerity, and integrity. Though he will be sorely missed, his dozens of fan-favorite films remain to memorialize his legacy.
To be warded off by the running time of The Right Stuff would be to miss an incredibly authentic space movie and Fred Ward's impressive turn as Gus Grissom, one of several crew members of the historic Mercury program in the great age of the space race.
Ward turns what could have effectively been a nervous whiner into a man with heart and conviction even as he's blamed for the spacecraft's sinking. With a combination of archival test footage and melodrama, it acts as a sort of documentary, and Grissom's part is essential for revealing the conflict between the engineers and the astronauts.
Remo Williams: The Adventure Begins follows its titular hero, a New York cop recruited for espionage, as he investigates an organization dealing in armaments on an international scale. Like a blue-collar James Bond, Remo Williams outsmarts the bad guys and gets the girl all while looking good in denim.
If ever there was an '80s movie that deserved a sequel it's this action-adventure romp, with Ward chewing the scenery as its hot-blooded hero during montage after montage of training scenes and high-speed chases, even learning how to dodge bullets before Neo. If a sequel ever happened, the powers that be can cast Jon Bernthal.
One of Ward's most well-known roles is in the horror-comedy Tremors where he plays Earl Bassett, a Graboid-busting hero who teams up with Kevin Bacon's Val to eradicate the giant worms swarming under the small town of Protection.
Bassett is one of the deadliest monster hunters in the Tremors franchise, and it's not hard to see why; Ward emanates old-fashioned know-how and efficacy in the role and comes up with several ingenious methods to destroy Graboids, becoming a true cult classic icon.
In Timerider: The Adventure of Lyle Swann, Ward plays a dirt bike racer from the '80s who, due to a temporal experiment, gets sent back into the '1870s. Using his resourcefulness and wit, he attempts to discover a way back to his own time.
As the maverick motorcyclist, Ward is agile, athletic, and humorous, taking a ridiculous premise and making it enjoyable. Long before Back to the Future Part III Ward was already doing this fun fish-out-of-water-story.
The third installment in the Naked Gun film series starring Leslie Neilson as Frank Drebin, Naked Gun 33+1/3: The Final Insult sees him come out of retirement to square off against a terrorist — played by Ward —intent on blowing up the Academy Awards.
Anyone unfamiliar with Ward's ability to be funny will be surprised at how well he handles the incredibly over-the-top style of comicality inherent to the franchise. Rocco referring to Drebin throughout the movie as "kid" is just one example of Ward's charm as a hammy villain.
Based on the life and times of author Henry Miller as revealed in AnaÏs Nin's memoir, Henry & June explores the throuple he entered into with her and his wife during their time in Paris. It has the distinction of being one of only a handful of NC-17 rated movies to be nominated for any Academy Awards.
Even amidst all the heavy-handed symbolism used in tandem with the sex scenes to amplify their erotic revelations, Ward can't help but imbue the movie with his signature earthiness. It's easy to see why Miller was drawn into a forbidden relationship of experimentation, and why anyone would want to participate with him, despite being anything but seductive.
While he played tough guys and heroes for most of his career, Ward was very effective as a villain, especially in Southern Comfort, in which he plays Corporal Reece. Reece is part of a squad from the Lousiana Army National Guard who, while doing routine weekend maneuvers, begins engaging in aggressive skirmishes with local Cajun people in the rural bayou.
Reece is sadistic right from the beginning, bringing live ammunition to a training sequence that should only involve blanks. Ward does a great job of presenting American hubris when facing an unseen enemy (allegorical to the Vietnam War), as well as its brutality, especially when torturing a captured Cajun man. He uses his appeal as a seemingly brave everyman to make the viewer increasingly uncomfortable as his sense of "justice" turns to barbarity.
As a veteran detective whose identity gets stolen by a criminal sociopath, Ward holds his own against Alec Baldwin in Miami Blues. He's ideally suited for the grizzled Sergeant Moseley, whose years have given him the experience and acumen necessary to stay one step ahead of Baldwin's killer.
Ward manages to bring humor and warmth into several scene-stealing moments while not being presented as entirely competent all the time. He's fallible, even perceived to be downright sleazy at times, and definitely more than a little quirky.
A movie inspired by the works of H.P. Lovecraft, Cast a Deadly Spell imagines a '40s version of the world where magic is a part of everyday life. Ward's detective Harry Phillip Lovecraft is assigned to locating the Necronomicon, and along the way must dodge crafty gunmen, femme fatales, and the occasional deadly spell.
Similar to Bright but with slightly more charm, the movie benefits from having someone like Ward ground it in reality. Fans believe that a movie involving zombie chauffeurs exists because Ward takes its world-building seriously.
Ward appeared in several Robert Altman films, but his most famous was Short Cuts, about several intertwined stories layered over one another, all beginning with a waitress running over a boy with her car. Altman's dialogue is often very naturalistic and doesn't feel like it's being spoken by actors, heightened by social scenes in which characters talk over one another.
Ward plays Stuart Kane, a salesman as disconnected from life as the rest of the characters who surround him, striving for a way to make his life find meaning. Even with a sprawling cast including Altman favorites like Tim Robbins and Lily Tomlin, he manages to make the most of his small but not insignificant role.
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