Bill Cobbs, ‘The Bodyguard’ and ‘Night at the Museum’ actor, dies at 90

Bill Cobbs, a prolific actor who appeared in dozens of movies and TV shows over the past half-century, including The Bodyguard, Night at the Museum, Demolition Man, and The Sopranos, died Tuesday from natural causes. He was 90.

His publicist, Chuck I. Jones, confirmed the news to Entertainment Weekly and remembered Cobbs as “just a phenomenal human being,” and “a very genuine, kind, and concerned person who was always looking to help others.”

A Cleveland native, Cobbs spent eight years in the Air Force as a radar technician and also worked at a car dealership and at IBM before turning his attention to Hollywood in his mid-30s. Some of his first professional acting credits in the 1974 movie The Taking of Pelham One Two Three (he was billed as Man on Platform) and a 1976 episode of the sitcom Good Times, in which he played George Gillard. Later in the 1980s, Cobbs was cast in popular shows and movies such as Sesame Street, Silkwood, Trading Places, One Life to Live, and L.A. Law.

The ’90s brought some of his most memorable work. Between 1991 and 1993, he appeared on 13 episodes of I’ll Fly Away, the Sam Waterston-led NBC drama set in the 1950s. Around this time, Cobbs also played Bill Devaney, the professional manager of Whitney Houston’s character, Rachel Marron, in the 1992 blockbuster The Bodyguard. In subsequent years, Cobbs was in Demolition Man, alongside Wesley Snipes and Sylvester Stallone, and in Tom Hanks’ That Thing You Do, a tale about the rapid rise and fall a 1960s rock band. And he played the Rev. James Sr. in a 2000 episode of HBO’s The Sopranos.

Cobbs continued to work in his later years, whether it was on an episode of One Tree Hill, 10 episodes of the short-lived Matthew Perry sitcom Go On, or in the 2006 movie Night at the Museum and its second sequel, 2014’s Night at the Museum: Secret of the Tomb. He portrayed Reginald, a security guard who has retired by the latter movie.

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In 2020, Cobbs was recognized for his turn as Mr. Hendrickson on Dino Dana, a Canadian educational show for children, when he won a Daytime Emmy.