Canadian actor and film producer, Lawrence Dane, passed away on 21 March 2022. His cause of death is still a mystery.
Born on 3 April 1937, Dane is best known for his role as Lt. Preston in Bride of Chucky.
The 84-year-old actor was a Genie Award nominee for Best Supporting Actor at the 1st Genie Awards in 1980 for the film Running, and an Earle Grey Award nominee at the 1981 ACTRA Awards for the television film A Question of the Sixth.
Born the youngest of six kids in Masson, Que., now part of Gatineau, his performing career took shape on the small screen.
His earliest parts were on “R.C.M.P.,” a 1959 CBC drama about the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, and the 1960s family series “The Forest Rangers.”
Eventually, he began working in Hollywood with guest-starring roles on the 1960s network TV series “Mission: Impossible,” “The Mod Squad” and “The F.B.I.” — in all three cases playing different characters on different seasons, a common practice at the time.
A starring role in Cronenberg’s 1981 cult hit “Scanners” as Braedon Keller, head of security at weaponry firm ConSec, sent Dane’s career to new heights.
For the rest of the decade, he turned up in an array of Canadian movies of the tax-shelter era, including one-by-one slasher “Happy Birthday to Me,” rat-infestation thriller “Of Unknown Origin” and monster truck rape-revenge story “Rolling Vengeance.”
He also worked behind the camera, co-writing and directing the 1984 drama “Heavenly Bodies,” a Toronto-shot film that revolves around the dancercise fad of the time.
By the 1990s, Dane was appearing in recurring parts on “Street Legal” as Judge Appleby, “The Red Green Show,” and “Queer as Folk” as the father of one of the main characters.
In a self-written obituary, Dane credited his fellow Canadian actors for blazing trails outside the country that he rode in his own career.
“They made it so much easier for us newcomers,” he wrote.