A ranch hand and blacksmith by trade, Brimley was urged to give acting a try by his close friend Robert Duvall. In the 1970's, Brimley landed a recurring role on The Waltons and appeared in The Electric Horseman with Robert Redford and The China Syndrome with Jack Lemmon.
But Brimley's heyday was during the 1980's with appearances in films like Absence of Malice with Paul Newman and Sally Field, Tender Mercies with friend Robert Duvall who was also instrumental in getting him cast as Pop Fisher in The Natural. Later he starred in the NBC TV series Our House.
I will always remember him though from the Cocoon movies and the line, "We'll never be sick, we don't get any older and we won't ever die."
I think people will always think of Brimley as an old man and yet in the above scene he is in his early 50's rather than in his 70's. Yet despite that what you saw and heard is what you got - mustache, voice and all. You believed it and once you heard him you never forgot it.
In recent years, Brimley appeared as a TV pitch man for Quaker Oats and Liberty Medical promoting diabetic medical supplies. Brimley himself was diabetic and fondly pronounced it "diabeetus".
And yet with all that Brimley had a musical side to him. He could both sing and play the mouth organ.
A live well lived. R.I.P.
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