Frank McRae, actor in License to Kill and Last Action Hero, dies at 80

Frank McRae, a former NFL player who appeared in over 40 films including James Bond’s License to Kill, Last Action Hero, and Batteries Not Included, has died. Deadline is reporting that he passed away on April 29 from a heart attack. He was 80 years old.

McRae was born in 1944 in Memphis, Tennessee. He played college football at Tennessee State University and then moved on to the NFL, where he played defensive tackle for the Chicago Bears and the Los Angeles Rams before starting his acting career.

McRae’s first credited role was in the 1973 TV movie Snatched. He went on to become a character actor in several big budget films. On the genre front, he’s best known for his role in the 1989 James Bond movie, License to Kill, where he played Sharkey, a fisherman who was good friends with Bond (Timothy Dalton) and Felix Leiter (David Hedison) and ended up paying the price for it.

Acting against Arnold Schwarzenegger’s in 1993’s Last Action Hero, McRae played the exasperated police captain, Lieutenant Dekker, who spends most of his time screaming at Schwarzenegger’s action hero parody, Jack Slater. In Batteries Not Included, a family sci-fi film about a group of small alien machines who help save an apartment building under threat of redevelopment, McRae played Harry Noble, a former boxer who lived in the building who had a love of machinery, even machinery from outer space.

McRae also appeared in several other films, including 48 Hrs., Red Dawn, Hard Times, National Lampoon’s Vacation, Loaded Weapon, and Used Cars.

He is survived by his son, Marcellus, daughter-in-law Suzanne, and three grandchildren — Camden, Jensen, and Holden. Donations in his memory can be made to Sheldrick Wildlife Trust, an orphan elephant rescue and wildlife rehabilitation program in Kenya.