Actor Fred Ward, best known for his role in movies like “The Right Stuff,” “The Player” and “Tremors,” dies last Sunday at the age of 79, his publicist Ron Hofmann said in a statement on Friday.

Fred was a San Diego native. He was also a boxer, lumberjack in Alaska, and short-order cook who served in the US Air Force. 

His early big role was alongside Clint Eastwood in the 1979 movie “Escape From Alcatraz.” He went on to play multiple roles including a rumpled cop chasing a psychotic criminal played in George Armitage’s “Miami Blues”, a formidable and intimidating father in “Summer Catch” and David Spade’s title character in “Joe Dirt.”

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He played President Ronald Reagan in the 2009 Cold War espionage thriller “Farewell” and had a supporting role in the 2013 action flick “2 Guns.” He also featured in the horror-comedy “Tremors.”

On the small screen, he had recurring roles on NBC’s “ER”, in which he played the father of Maura Tierney’s Abby Lockhart in 2006-2007. He also guest starred on series such as as “Grey’s Anatomy,” “Leverage” and “United States of Tara.”

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“The unique thing about Fred Ward is that you never knew where he was going to pop up, so unpredictable were his career choices,” Hofmann said.

“He could play such diverse characters as Remo Williams, a cop trained by Chiun, Master of Sinanju (Joel Grey) to become an unstoppable assassin in Remo Williams: The Adventure Begins, or Earl Bass, who, alongside Kevin Bacon, battle giant, worm-like monsters hungry for human flesh in ‘cult’ horror/comedy film, Tremors (1990), or a detective in the indie film Two Small Bodies (1993) directed by underground filmmaker Beth B., or a terrorist planning to blow up the Academy Awards in The Naked Gun 33 1/3: The Final Insult (1994), or the father of the lead character in Jennifer Lopez’s revenge thriller Enough (2002).”

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Ward earned a Golden Globe and shared the Venice Film Festival ensemble prize for his performance in Robert Altman’s “Short Cuts.”