Wilford Brimley, Is Dead at 85

Anthony Wilford Brimley was born on Sept. 27, 1934, in Salt Lake City. His father, a real estate broker, sold the family farm in 1939 and moved his family to Santa Monica, Calif.

Wilford Brimley, Recognizable by his walrus mustache, found his niche playing cantankerous coots in “Absence of Malice,” “The Natural,” “Cocoon” and other films, died on Saturday in a hospital in St. George, Utah. He was 85.

He had been sick for two months with a kidney ailment, said his agent, Lynda Bensky.

Mr. Brimley had played the Walton Mountain resident Horace Brimley in a recurring role on the television series “The Waltons” when Michael Douglas, the producer of “The China Syndrome,” gave him his breakthrough role: Ted Spindler, an assistant engineer at a nuclear plant.

In the film’s climactic scene, in which he is being interviewed by a crusading television reporter played by Jane Fonda, Mr. Brimley delivered an impassioned defense of his boss (Jack Lemmon), who had precipitated a crisis to draw public attention to defects at the plant.

In an article for The New York Times singling out Mr. Brimley as a talent to watch, Janet Maslin called him “the mustachioed man who very nearly steals the ending of ‘China Syndrome’ from Jane Fonda.”