The Hollywood Reporter confirmed on Thursday that actor Brad Johnson died in February due to complications from COVID-19.
He was best known to many for his role in Steven Spielberg’s 1989 fantasy-drama Always, in which he and Richard Dreyfuss both vie for the heart of Holly Hunter.
Johnson worked consistently in television and cable movies throughout the 1990s and early 2000s, and was the co-lead in the Left Behind series. He was 62 years old.
The Arizona-born Johnson was raised on a cattle ranch, and quit business school just shy of his degree to accept a rodeo scholarship at the College of Southern Idaho.
The 6’3”, square-jawed fella then found work as a model, representing Calvin Klein, Busch beer, and, yes, Marlboro cigarettes.
Johnson reflected about his position in tar-stained American folklore for MEL Magazine in 2019. He confessed, however, that he never was a smoker. “I lit a million of them, though,” he said.
Always was Johnson’s first substantial acting gig, and while it didn’t catapult him to superstardom, he was rarely without work.
He starred opposite Danny Glover and Willem Dafoe in John Milius’s Flight of the Intruder in 1991, and was Daphne Zuniga’s love interest Dr. Dominick O’Malley on the mid-‘90s