John Beasley, the veteran character actor who played a kindly school bus driver on the TV drama Everwood has died at the age of 79.
Beasley, who appeared in dozens of films dating back to the 1980s, died Tuesday (30 June) after a “brief and unexpected illness” at a hospital in his hometown of Omaha, his manager, Don Spradlin, said.
The actor played an assistant coach in the 1993 football film Rudy and a retired preacher in 1997’s The Apostle, co-starring and directed by Robert Duvall.
On TV, Beasley was the father of Cedric the Entertainer in the TV Land comedy The Soul Man and later starred for four seasons alongside Treat Williams in The WB’s Everwood.
Most recently, Beasley had small parts in the Showtime drama Your Honor, with Bryan Cranston, and The Mandalorian, a Star Wars offshoot on Disney+.
For more than a dozen years, he ran the John Beasley Theater and Workshop in Omaha, where he was born in 1943.
“To be a working artist is the highest calling, and I appreciate wherever it takes me,” Beasley told the publication American Theatre last year.
He is survived by Judy, his wife of 58 years; two sons, Michael and Tyrone; and six grandchildren, including Malik Beasley, who plays for the Los Angeles Lakers.
The NBA veteran paid tribute to his grandfather on Instagram.
“To the man who put the Beasleys on the map,” he wrote.
