CNN
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Clarence Gilyard, the actor greatest identified for taking part in laptop hacker Theo in “Die Hard” and naval flight officer Marcus “Sunset” Williams in “Top Gun,” has died on the age of 66.
His loss of life was introduced on Monday in a press release from the College of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV), the place he had been working as an affiliate professor on the School of Effective Arts.
“It’s with profound disappointment that I share this information,” Dean Nancy Uscher mentioned within the assertion shared on Instagram. “His college students had been deeply impressed by him, as had been all who knew him. He had many extraordinary abilities and was extraordinarily well-known within the college by way of his dedication to instructing and his skilled accomplishments.”
UNLV movie chair Heather Addison remembered Gilyard as a “beacon of sunshine and energy for everybody round him at UNLV.”
She added: “At any time when we requested him how he was, he would cheerfully declare that he was ‘Blessed!’ However we’re really those who had been blessed to be his colleagues and college students for therefore a few years. We love you and can miss you dearly, Professor G!”
No additional particulars surrounding his loss of life have been made public.
In line with UNLV, Gilyard ventured into performing after learning Theatre Arts at California State College. He landed his first position on the TV present “Diff’hire Strokes” in 1981.
In 1986, Gilyard made his movie debut in “High Gun,” by which he performed Sunset, one of many elite fighter pilots.
Two years later, he was forged as Theo, the pc professional who helps Hans Gruber’s terrorist group, within the thriller “Die Onerous.”
He received his massive primetime TV break in 1989, when he landed the position of Conrad McMasters on the NBC authorized drama “Matlock,” starring reverse Andy Griffith. He then portrayed Chuck Norris’ crime-fighting companion Jimmy Trivette on “Walker, Texas Ranger.”
Gilyard’s performing credit additionally embody “The Karate Child Half II,” “CHiPS” and the “Left Behind” movies.
Regardless of his achieved performing profession, Gilyard stepped away from performing in 2006 to start out instructing at UNLV and directing productions on the college’s Nevada Conservatory Theatre.
“I’m wired to show. And I’m an expert, however the occupation has to feed the classroom. It’s what stimulates my characters as a result of I’m in contact with folks’s lives within the twenty first century,” he informed the Las Vegas Review-Journal in 2017.
“I work greatest as an artist after I’m in a fertile area. Meaning inventive and imaginative. Being with all these millennials — I don’t perceive what they’re saying however I’m siphoning off their vitality.”
He did, nonetheless, make a quick return to the display screen in 2021, when he reunited with Bruce Willis and De’voreaux White for a “Die Onerous” battery industrial.
