Longtime Actor Rip Torn’s Cause of Death Revealed 5 Months After Death

Save

12/13/2019Updated: 12/13/2019

Longtime actor Rip Torn’s cause of death was due to his years-long battle with Alzheimer’s disease, it was reported.

The “Men in Black” star died at his Connecticut home in July 2019, but TMZ on Friday obtained a copy of his death certificate, which showed his cause of death was “due to (or as a consequence of) Alzheimer’s dementia.”

The certificate said that Torn, who was 88, was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s years before his death, and he was buried at a cemetery in Poughkeepsie, New York, later that month.

Reports earlier this year said he died at his home in Connecticut.

The longtime actor is survived by his six children, including daughters Danae, Angelica, Katie, and Claire as well as his sons Tony and Jon, noted the New York Daily News. He is also survived by his wife, Amy Wright.

Torn appeared in HBO’s “The Larry Sanders Show,” winning an Emmy Award. He also appeared in ”Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story,” “Will and Grace,” “30 Rock,” “Cross Creek,” and other productions in a career that spanned decades, according to his IMDB page. For his role in “Cross Creek,” he was nominated for an Academy Award in 1984.

However, he is probably best known for his role as MIB agency boss Zed in “Men in Black” and “Men in Black II,” which both starred Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones.

Before that, his career hit a dry spell in the 1970s. “I wouldn’t say that I was blacklisted,” he told The Associated Press in 1984, “but the word got around that I was difficult and unreliable. Unreliable! In all my years in the theater I have never missed a performance.”

Of note, in 1994, actor and director Dennis Hopper told an audience on “The Tonight Show With Jay Leno” that Torn once pulled a knife in a New York restaurant after complaining about being replaced in “Easy Rider.” For that, Torn sued Hopper for slander and won $475,000 after a judgment was handed down in his favor, AP reported.