'The Great Waldo Pepper' star Bo Brundin passes away at 85

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Bo Brundin, a Swedish actor widely known for playing a despondent German World War I pilot alongside Robert Redford in the action adventure movie 'The Great Waldo Pepper', has passed away. He was 85.

A representative for Paar Productions informed The Hollywood Reporter that Brundin passed away on Sunday in his native Uppsala, Sweden. Starlight, a 2011 short film in which he played God, was one of the actor's final ventures for the business.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, Max Von Sydow would play Brundin in the classic 1957 film adaptation of Ingmar Bergman's 'The Seventh Seal'. Brundin also had a brief part as a political prisoner in Jerry Lewis' infamous never-released 1972 comedy The Day the Clown Cried.

Throughout his acting career, Brundin frequently played Germans and Russians. He also made appearances on the big screen in the X-rated films 'Around the World With Fanny Hill' (1974), 'Shoot the Sun Down' (1978), 'Meteor' (1979), and 'Raise the Titanic' (1979), where his tragic character plays a crucial role in saving the world (1980).

Additionally, Brundin played Harold Jordache, an uncle of the brothers played by Nick Nolte and Peter Strauss, in the renowned 1976 ABC miniseries Rich Man, Poor Man.

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George Roy Hill co-wrote and directed 'The Great Waldo Pepper' for Universal Pictures in 1975, and Brundin played Ernst Kessler, a disillusioned German pilot who is now working as a stuntman in a biopic of his life. In the climactic climax of the film, he and Redford's Waldo engage in an extremely intense dogfight that leaves both of them respecting the other.

"It was a little scary because there was a real crash just about an hour before I went up for the first time," Brundin recalled in a 2015 interview. "I saw the crash, and [stuntman] Frank Tallman had his forehead split. It took three weeks in the hospital. ... We used the Tiger Moth plane, which was a great plane except it's a little clumsy. It's like a little elephant in the air."

Paul Newman ran his Oscar campaign that year, according to the Paar Productions spokesperson.

Brundin joined the Poor People's Theater, directed by actress Trish Van Devere, appeared on an episode of ABC's N.Y.P.D. from 1968 to 1970, starred in A Baltic Tragedy, and played a deranged killer in the horror movie The Headless Eyes that gouges out the eyes of young women (1971).

In addition to Rich Man, Poor Man, Brundin also made appearances on 'The Bionic Woman', 'Tales of the Gold Monkey', 'Hawaii Five-O', 'Wonder Woman', 'Manimal', 'The A-Team', 'Dallas', and 'Falcon Crest'. Brundin also starred in three more 1970s miniseries, The Rhinemann Exchange, The Word, and Centennial.

'Strawberries With Real Milk' was his most recent Swedish film (2001). In 2013, he relocated back to his native country, where he spent the remainder of his life coaching aspiring actors.

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