James Tolkan dies: ‘Back to the Future' actor was 94

James Tolkan, the character actor best known for playing the stern Mr Strickland in the Back to the Future trilogy and Commander Stinger in Top Gun, has died. 

He was 94. 

His death was announced by a family spokesperson and confirmed by Back to the Future writer-producer Bob Gale, who wrote on the franchise's website that Tolkan "passed away peacefully in Saranac Lake, NY" on Thursday.

Tolkan spent more than five decades in film and television, building a career that stretched from a 1960 appearance in the TV series Naked City all the way to 2024, when he appeared in the documentary Tom Wilson: Humbly Super Famous. 

But it was his work in the 1980s that cemented his place in popular culture.

As vice principal Mr Strickland, he appeared in the original Back to the Future in 1985 and returned for the 1989 sequel. 

For the third film in 1990, he played Strickland's grandfather. 

In Tony Scott's Top Gun in 1986, he played Commander Tom Jardian alongside Tom Cruise, Val Kilmer and Meg Ryan.

His broader filmography was impressively varied, taking in Serpico, WarGames, The Amityville Horror, Masters of the Universe and many others, alongside television appearances on The Wonder Years, The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air and more.

Born in Calumet, Michigan on 20 June 1931, Tolkan served in the US Navy before studying at Coe College and the University of Iowa. 

It was there that someone told him he needed to go to New York if he was serious about acting. 

In 1956, he got on a Greyhound bus with $75 in his pocket and no contacts in the city. "I didn't know a soul in New York," he recalled in a 2021 interview. 

He was scared, ran out of money and worked as a busboy on Central Park South to get by, but he described that period as "the greatest time of my life. It was full of promise and possibilities." 

He is survived by his wife Parmelee, whom he met on the set of an off-Broadway play called Pinkville in 1971, where she worked as a prop girl.

They married that same year in Lake Placid.