Alan Rachins dead: Actor who starred in LA Law and Dharma & Greg dies of heart failure aged 82
BELOVED TV star Alan Rachins has died aged 82 in Los Angeles.
The Emmy-nominated actor featured in such hit shows as LA Law and Dharma & Greg and was a household name in the 1980s and 1990s.
He tragically died from heart failure while asleep at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center early Saturday morning, his widow Joanna Frank told The Hollywood Reporter.
In LA Law he played the rich, tough-as-nails, philandering attorney Douglas Brackman.
The show, co-created by his brother-in-law, won four outstanding drama series Emmys with Rachins featuring in all but one of the 172 episodes.
In 1988 he received Emmy and Golden Globe nominations for his acting.
In a contrast, he later played the the hippie father of Jenna Elfman’s character on Dharma & Greg.
Rachins featured in all 199 episodes of the sitcom that ran between 1997 and 2002 for five seasons.
Rachins went on to appear on the big screen in Heart Condition (1990), North (1994), Meet Wally Sparks (1997), Leave It to Beaver (1997) and Commencement (2012).
But he began his career on stage, starring nude in an off-Broadway production of Oh! Calcutta.
People would regularly joke that they recognise Rachins with his clothes on.
He said: “That was the supposed joke I must have heard 30 times, and I was getting less and less and less pleasant about it.”
He took a years-long hiatus from acting to focus on writing, selling scripts to such memorable shows as Knight Rider and Hill Street Blues.
In 1985, Rachins made a comeback to acting with the independent romantic comedy Always, which also featured his wife Joanna Frank.