Clarence Gilyard Jr. has died at the age of 66.
Nancy J. Uscher, the dean for the College of Fine Arts at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, where Gilyard served as a theater and film professor, announced his passing on Monday. A cause of death was not given.
Heather Addison, the UNLV film chair, called Gilyard “a beacon of light and strength for everyone around him at UNLV.”
Gilyard’s career spanned stage and screen over more than 30 years. He once told the St. Anthony Messenger that a part in a children’s theater production based on Aesop’s Fables led him to his first play, Bleacher Bums, about a group of Chicago Cubs baseball fans. Because of that production, he said he “started taking an acting class in Hollywood.”
Among the roles he’s become most known for, Gilyard appeared in 20 episodes of the 1980s series CHIPs as Officer Benjamin Webster, in 85 episodes of the 1990s series Matlock as Conrad McMasters, and more than 190 episodes of Walker, Texas Ranger as Jimmy Trivette. The actor played naval pilot Marcus “Sundown” Williams in 1986’s Top Gun; Theo, the obnoxious tech specialist of Alan Rickman’s Hans Gruber, in 1988’s Die Hard; and New Hope Village Church pastor Bruce Barnes in the Left Behind movie trilogy of the early 2000s.
Gilyard received his BA in Theatre Arts from California State University, Dominguez Hills. He would later take a sabbatical after Matlock and Walker, Texas Ranger to complete an MFA in Theatre Performance at Southern Methodist University.
UNLV theater professor Nate Bynum said teaching was a “major goal” for Gilyard.
