Bill Cobbs

Wilbert Francisco "Bill" Cobbs (born 16 June 1934) is an American actor known for his roles in The Hitter (1979), The Brother from Another Planet (1984), I'll Fly Away (1991–1993, TV series), and The Michael Richards Show (2000, TV series). In 2020, he won a Daytime Emmy Award for Outstanding Limited Performance in a Daytime Program for the series Dino Dana.

Early life

Cobbs was born on June 16, 1934, in Cleveland, Ohio. His mother was a domestic worker and a father worked in construction. He is the second cousin of James Baskett.

Career

As an amateur actor in the city's Karamu House Theater, Cobbs starred in the Ossie Davis play Purlie Victorious.

Cobbs served in the United States Air Force as a radar technician for eight years; he also worked in office products at IBM and sold cars in Cleveland. 

In 1970, at the age of 36, he left for New York to seek work as an actor. There he turned down a job in the NBC sales department in order to have time for auditions. He supported himself by driving a cab, repairing office equipment, selling toys, and performing odd jobs. His first professional acting role was in Ride a Black Horse at the Negro Ensemble Company. From there he appeared in small theater productions, street theater, regional theater, and at the Eugene O'Neill Theatre.

Cobbs was in Vegetable Soup (1976), a New York public television educational series, and he made his feature film debut in 1974 in Joseph Sargent's thriller The Taking of Pelham One Two Three, starring Walter Matthau, Robert Shaw, and Martin Balsam.

Cobbs has an extensive film career and has appeared and been a regular on many television programs, including The Michael Richards Show, The Outer Limits, I'll Fly Away, Yes, Dear, The Sopranos, Six Feet Under, The Others, JAG, The Drew Carey Show, October Road, One Tree Hill, and Star Trek: Enterprise (as Dr. Emory Erickson, inventor of the Transporter.) He had a recurring role as "George," a blind grief-support-group member, in the TV series, Go On, which premiered in 2012.

In 2006, Cobbs played a supporting role in Night at the Museum as "Reginald," a security guard on the verge of retirement. The character also served as an antagonist to the story. He played basketball coach and retired basketball player "Arthur Chaney" in Disney's Air Bud and Charles Evers, the older brother of Medgar Evers (played by James Pickens Jr.), in Rob Reiner's Ghosts of Mississippi.

He had a role in the Coen Brothers' The Hudsucker Proxy and played fictional jazz pianist "Del Paxton" in Tom Hanks' That Thing You Do. He did a brief appearance in the 2010 film The Search for Santa Paws.

In 2013, Cobbs co-starred in Oz the Great and Powerful, and in late 2014 reprised his role of "Reginald" in Night at the Museum: Secret of the Tomb. He recorded a public service announcement for Deejay Ra's Hip-Hop Literacy2 campaign, encouraging reading of Ice-T's autobiography.

In 2019, he played "Swilley" in James Cullen Bressack's action film Beyond the Law, starring Johnny Messner, Steven Seagal, and DMX.

Most recently, Cobbs guest-starred in the two-part series finale of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. portraying an unnamed elderly S.H.I.E.L.D. agent.

He has also finished filming for Jay Silverman's Saving Paradise, in which he will portray the character of "John Thompson" alongside William Moseley and Johanna Braddy. The release date is yet to be announced.

Filmography