Two-time Oscar-winner Jason Robards dead at 78

In this story: An athlete who started to act Robards and O'Neill: the perfect pair Oscar times two Words moved him RELATED STORIES, SITES

From staff and wire reports

BRIDGEPORT, Connecticut -- Actor Jason Robards died Tuesday at Bridgeport Hospital in Bridgeport, Connecticut. He was 78.

A cancer patient, he had been in the hospital less than 24 hours, hospital spokeswoman Sally Dalton told CNN.

A two-time Oscar winner, Robards was known for playing gruff, often gritty characters in a career that spanned more than 40 years. But actress Debbie Reynolds said Robards, a two-time Oscar winner, had a lighter side: He had a secret ambition to be a song-and-dance man.

VIDEO CNN's Cynthia Tornquist reports on the life and career of actor Jason Robards Play video (QuickTime, Real or Windows Media)     MESSAGE BOARD Remembering Jason Robards

"He always wanted to do musicals," Reynolds told KCBS-TV in Los Angeles, California. "This great actor wanted to just kick it up.

"We'll all miss him a lot."

An athlete who started to act

Robards was born Jason Nelson Robards Jr. on July 26, 1922, in Chicago, Illinois, the son of Jason Nelson Robards Sr., a prominent actor.

Despite his father's prolific career in more than 170 movies, the young Robards had no interest in acting while he was growing up.

At Hollywood High School in Los Angeles, Robards was on the baseball, football, basketball and track teams, and thought about becoming a professional athlete. After graduating in 1939, he went on active duty with the U.S. Naval Reserve as an apprentice seaman.

While serving in the Pacific in World War II, where he received the Navy Cross, Robards read some plays by Eugene O'Neill and told his father he wanted to try his hand at acting. At his father's urging, Robards enrolled in the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in 1946.

In 1953, director Jose Quintero gave him the male lead in Victor Wolfson's "American Gothic," which opened at the off-Broadway Circle in the Square.

He earned his first critical acclaim in May 1956, when he appeared in "The Iceman Cometh" at the Circle in the Square, again under Quintero's direction. Robards played Hickey, the salesman who forces the characters to accept death.

Robards and O'Neill: Perfect pair

Robards has been described as "the definitive interpreter of the works of playwright Eugene O'Neill."

The announcement of his National Medal of Arts award in 1997 praised his performance in "The Iceman Cometh" and his Broadway and film versions of "Long Day's Journey Into Night." The roles not only established his fame, presenters said, but cemented O'Neill's reputation as one of America's premiere playwrights.

Robards also won a Tony award for his performance in "The Disenchanted."

He made his film debut in 1959, playing a Hungarian freedom fighter in "The Journey." After the film was shot, Robards said he preferred theater to the movies.

"Once you're on, nobody can say 'cut it.' You're out there on your own, and there's always that thrill of a real live audience," he told Newsweek in a 1958 interview.

Oscar, times two

Yet he went on to make more than 50 feature films. After winning an Academy Award in 1976 for his role as Washington Post executive editor Bed Bradlee in "All the President's Men," Robards captured another the following year for his portrayal of author Dashiell Hammett in "Julia."

His other films included: "Divorce American Style," 1967; "Johnny Got His Gun," 1971; "Comes a Horseman," 1978; "Melvin and Howard," 1980; "Parenthood," 1989; and "Philadelphia," 1994.

In 1997, he played the tyrannical land baron father in "A Thousand Acres," the film adaptation of Jane Smiley's Pulitzer-prize winning novel. The film featured Jessica Lange, Michelle Pfeiffer and Jennifer Jason Leigh as his daughters.

He last appeared on the silver screen in the critically acclaimed 1999 Paul Thomas Anderson film "Magnolia." In it, Robards played Earl Partridge, the bedridden father of a misogynist self-help guru played by Tom Cruise.

Director Lanny Cotler worked with Robards in the 1998 Family Channel film "Heartwood" about the upheaval in northern California's redwood region. He said the actor inspired his young stars, including Hilary Swank, who won an Oscar for best actress the next year for "Boys Don't Cry."

"He was the most experienced actor on our cast and was by far the most flexible and the most willing to just give of himself beyond the call of the duty," Cotler said. "It was just amazing to watch that man work."

In 1999, Robards was one of five performers selected to receive the Kennedy Center Honors.

Words moved him

Despite his prolific film work, Robards stayed loyal to the theater.

"The theater has kept me alive and it's allowed me to work at my craft," he said in a 1997 interview.

Robards, who was known as a classical actor, shunned the notion of "method" acting and actors who look for motivation for their stage work.

"I look at the words," he said in a 1993 interview with The Providence (Rhode Island) Journal-Bulletin. "All I know is, I don't do a lot of analysis. I know those words have to move me. I rely on the author."

"I don't want actors reasoning with me about 'motivation' and all that bull. All I want 'em to do is learn the goddamn lines and don't bump into each other.' "

Robards was married four times -- including once to Lauren Bacall -- and had six children. In his later years, he lived with his wife of more than 30 years, Lois, in what he once called "a quiet life on the water" in Fairfield, Connecticut.

After a car accident in 1972, Robard's face had to be surgically reconstructed. He said that he had had bouts of depression during his life and was once a heavy drinker. He said he gave up alcohol in 1974.

He sometimes rejected characterizations of him as America's leading actor, saying in 1993: "All I know about acting is that I just have to keep on doing it."

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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Filmbug: Movie Stars: Jason Robards
The National Medal Of The Arts
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