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Actor John Amos Dies at 84

(Los Angeles, CA) – John Amos, a running back turned actor who appeared in scores of TV shows — including groundbreaking 1970s programs such as the sitcom “Good Times” and the epic miniseries “Roots” — and risked his career to protest demeaning portrayals of Black characters, died Aug. 21 in Los Angeles. He was 84. His family stated that he died of natural causes, though it’s unclear why the family waited weeks after his death to make it public.

After being cut by 13 professional and minor-league football teams in his 20s, often because of injuries, his breakthrough came in 1969, when he became one of the first African Americans to write on staff for a network program (CBS’s “The Leslie Uggams Show”). Having impressed executives with his comic timing, he soon began performing on camera.

In the popular Eddie Murphy movie comedy “Coming to America” (1988), Mr. Amos was the self-important fast-food restaurant owner who insists that his McDowell’s — home of the “Big Mick” sandwich and the “Golden Arcs” — is not a copy of McDonald’s because “my buns have no seeds.”

He played a brutal prison guard in the Sylvester Stallone film “Lock Up” (1989) and a renegade Special Forces officer in the Bruce Willis action hit “Die Hard 2” (1990). But by the end of his career, he was best known for his steady run of TV roles. From 1974 to 1979 he starred in his defining role of James Evans in “Good Times”, the loving father of a family trying to make ends meet while living in a high-rise housing project in Chicago. Soon after departing “Good Times,” Mr. Amos was cast as the adult Kunta Kinte on “Roots,” the landmark 1977 ABC miniseries.

John Allen Amos Jr. was born in Newark on Dec. 27, 1939, and grew up in nearby East Orange, New Jersey.