Sam Bottoms, 1955 - 2008.

Sam Bottoms, a film and television actor who played the role of California surfer-turned-GI Lance Johnson in Francis Ford Coppola's 1979 Vietnam War epic Apocalypse Now, has died. He was 53.

Dennis McLellan, Los Angeles Times.

The younger brother of Timothy Bottoms, with whom he made his film debut in The Last Picture Show (1971), went on to a number of high profile gigs." Lance "could have stepped out of a silent film, as unflappable as Buster Keaton as all hell breaks loose around him, unscratched by calamity due to an essential, almost holy simplicity that strips him of desire and renders him bulletproof. His tragic "stumble-minded" character in The Last Picture Show isn't so fortunate... and yet he's the happiest of the lot, even up to the moment of his senseless death.

Arbogast.

Posted by dwhudson at December 18, 2008 11:26 AM