Tony Todd

Tony Todd's screen career began in serious pictures. He is in Platoon as one of Oliver Stone's grunts, in Bird, in Lean on Me, working steadily through the late 1980s. In 1990 he took the lead in Tom Savini's remake of Night of the Living Dead, and in 1992 Candyman handed him something rarer than a hit: a horror figure who belongs to the actor rather than to the makeup department.

The role works because of how he uses his voice. Candyman is courtly. He speaks in long unhurried lines, more seducer than monster, and the dread comes from the calm. Todd played him again in 1995, in 1999, and once more in Nia DaCosta's 2021 film, by which point he was the connective tissue of the whole thing. It brought him nominations at the Critics' Choice and Fangoria Chainsaw Awards.

The other franchise was William Bludworth in Final Destination: five appearances across twenty five years, usually two scenes at a time, explaining the rules to people who will not listen. He worked constantly outside horror as well, largely in voice, as Darkseid in the DC animated films, Zoom in The Flash, the Fallen in a Transformers picture, Dreadwing, Slyrak. Nobody in that field had a better instrument. Born in Washington, D.C. in 1954, he died in 2024, with a final Bludworth appearance released the year after.