Nicholas Worth


Nicholas Worth was an American character actor who appeared on film, on TV, and in video games.

Early years

Worth was born in St. Louis, Missouri on September 4, 1937. He served for three years in the army as a paratrooper and studied at the Carnegie Institute of Technology and Pasadena Playhouse.

Career

Worth specialized in playing antagonistic characters. Among his best-known, most typical villainous roles are Kirk Smith, the tormented necrophiliac serial-killer of attractive young women in the low-budget horror film Don't Answer the Phone!, and Ray, a fearsome homosexual rapist in the 1985 television film The Rape of Richard Beck.
He began with a low-level TV career, appearing in one episode of Charlie's Angels as a kidnapper-on-skates. Subsequently, he played numerous roles as henchmen and tough guys in films such as Swamp Thing, City Heat, Doin' Time, The Ladies Club, No Way Out, Hell Comes to Frogtown, Action Jackson, The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad!, Darkman, Best of the Best II, Plughead Rewired: Circuitry Man II, Barb Wire and Blood Dolls. He appeared at the beginning of Heartbreak Ridge as a convict who was beaten up by Clint Eastwood, and in the same year, he played a Divine-like drag queen who loses his clothes to John Candy in Armed and Dangerous. He continued his television career, playing small roles in sci-fi programs like Star Trek: Voyager and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, and in WKRP in Cincinnati, Knight Rider, Hunter, Night Court and Simon & Simon.
He also did video game work, portraying General Marzaq and Soviet leader Alexander Romanov in Westwood Studios' Command & Conquer series of games, Sierra's The Beast Within: A Gabriel Knight Mystery, and Emperor: Battle for Dune. He also provided the voice of Mr. Jones/Colonel Bulba in Freedom Fighters.

Personal life

Worth was an amateur power-lifter and bodybuilder and a born-again Christian.

Death

Worth died of heart failure at Valley Presbyterian Hospital in Van Nuys, California at the age of 69.

Selected filmography