Robert Blake, the controversial actor who won an Emmy for Best Actor in Baretta and appeared in films like In Cold Blood and Lost Highway before a murder trial ended his career, died on Thursday, March 9, due to heart disease in Los Angeles. He was 89. His niece, Noreen Austin, confirmed the news.
On Thursday, American actor Robert Blake passed away in Los Angeles. He had a long career in TV and film, and is remembered for playing the unsettling “mysterious man” in David Lynch’s 1997 film Lost Highway.
Blake was born in New Jersey in 1933 and began acting as a child when his family moved to California. He appeared in TV comedies like Our Gang and starred in Baretta, a 1970s series in which he played undercover detective Tony Baretta. Meanwhile, he acted in dozens of films, including The Woman in the Window (1944), The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948), and In Cold Blood (1967), based on the novel by Truman Capote. His final film was Lost Highway, in which he portrayed a mysterious, pale-faced man who haunts the protagonist (played by Bill Pullman) with cryptic and unsettling appearances.
Blake was arrested in 2002 on suspicion of being involved in the murder of Bonny Lee Bakley, who was shot in their car, which was parked outside a Los Angeles restaurant where they had just had dinner. Blake claimed his innocence, stating that he left his wife in the car to retrieve a gun he had forgotten in the restaurant, only to find her dead upon his return. It was later discovered that the gun Blake retrieved was not the one used in the murder, which was found in a dumpster. After a four-year trial, including one year spent in custody, he was acquitted in 2005 by a Los Angeles court, but he never acted again. However, he was later ordered to pay damages to Bakley’s children, who had sued for wrongful death.
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