Harry Johnson, an actor with credit starting from the unique ‘Battlestar Galactica’ to ‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer,’ numerous Dick Wolf programmes, and the famed ‘Harry & Louise’ advertisements, died on January 2 in Los Angeles after a protracted sickness, Deadline reported. He was 81.

Christiane, his spouse, confirmed his demise to Deadline. Born on December 27, 1942, in Plainfield, New Jersey, he was generally known as Chip Johnson within the Nineteen Seventies and Eighties and was one in all Universal Studios’ ultimate contract performers.

Johnson started his display screen profession with the multi-part pilot episode of ‘Battlestar Galactica’ in 1978 and went on to guest-star on dozens of TV collection, together with ‘M*A*S*H,’ ‘Quincy M.E.’, ‘The Incredible Hulk,’ ‘Simon & Simon,’ ‘The Greatest American Hero’, ‘Highway to Heaven,’ ‘The A-Team,’ ‘Who’s the Boss?,’ ‘Thirtysomething,’ ‘Melrose Place,’ ‘Party of Five,’ ‘Days of Our Lives’ and ‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer.’ He was a distinguished ADR voice actor who has contributed to a number of Need for Speed video video games. For greater than twenty years, Johnson was the voice-over or looping group on a number of Dick Wolf episodes, together with all the ‘Law & Order’ and ‘Chicago’ collection.

He additionally acted in movies similar to ‘Real Genius,’ ‘Warlock,’ and ‘The Spitfire Grill,’ in addition to numerous TV movies, most notably ‘Time Warp,’ through which he co-starred with Batman veteran Adam West. Johnson famously performed Harry in a collection of ‘Harry & Louise’ TV and radio commercials in opposition to President Bill Clinton’s health-care proposal in 1993-94.

The Health Insurance Association of America funded the promoting, which was so common (one well-known slogan was ‘If you let the federal government select, we lose’) that the Democratic National Committee later produced response advertisements. In 2000 and 2004, Johnson and Louise Claire Clark reprised their roles in election-year advertisements.

Harry and Louise reappeared in an advert that aired on the 2008 Democratic National Convention and once more the next yr, this time for a industrial selling President Barack Obama’s new health-care proposal. The commercials have been imitated in the course of the 2006 Oscars broadcast, that includes a voiceover by Stephen Colbert, then-host of The Colbert Report.

Johnson went on to write down books below the pen title Harry Castle. His debut novel, ‘Fugitive Romance’, the Fictional Memoir of a Hollywood Screenwriter, was printed in 2013, whereas his second e book, ‘Miracles & Misfits,’ was a set of brief tales. Johnson’s spouse instructed Deadline that he beloved to sail and was well-known amongst coworkers for his humour and behavior of bringing a lightness to settings, making work pleasurable.

Johnson is survived by his stepchildren Oliver and Penelope, in addition to his spouse of 15 years, Christiane. (ANI)

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