Beau Starr, the gravel-voiced character actor whose memorable turns in “Goodfellas” and the “Halloween” franchise earned him a devoted following over a four-decade career, has died. He was 81.
Starr died peacefully of natural causes on Friday, April 24, 2026, at his home in Vancouver, British Columbia, his younger brother, actor Mike Starr, confirmed. Mike, best known for “Dumb and Dumber,” described his late sibling as “very unique and special” in a statement reported by Variety.
The news was also announced publicly by Christopher Serrone, who played the young Henry Hill in Martin Scorsese’s 1990 mob epic and shared the screen with Starr in some of the film’s most harrowing moments.
From the Gridiron to the Soundstage
Born September 1, 1944, in Queens, New York, Starr first chased a career in professional sports before he ever considered acting. He spent the 1966 through 1968 seasons on the New York Jets’ practice squad, then crossed the border to play in the Canadian Football League, suiting up for the Montreal Alouettes and later the Hamilton Tiger-Cats.
When his football career wound down, Starr pivoted to performing. He made his onscreen debut in 1979 on the Canadian sketch comedy series “Bizarre,” where he played a rotating cast of oddball characters that helped him develop the elastic, everyman quality that would define his later work.
Throughout the 1980s, Starr became one of those reliable faces audiences couldn’t quite place but always recognized. He racked up guest spots on a roster of beloved series including “T.J. Hooker,” “Cagney & Lacey,” “Three’s Company,” “Knight Rider,” “Remington Steele,” “The A-Team,” “MacGyver,” “The Fall Guy,” “Moonlighting,” “Night Court,” “Matlock,” “Murder, She Wrote” and “NYPD Blue.” He also landed a memorable three-episode arc as Joey DeSoto on the groundbreaking police drama “Hill Street Blues.”
Sheriff Meeker and a Brutal Father
Horror fans will forever associate Starr with Haddonfield, Illinois. He played the steely Sheriff Ben Meeker in 1988’s “Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers” and reprised the role the following year in “Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers.” His performances helped anchor the slasher sequels in a sense of small-town authority that made Michael Myers’ rampages feel all the more terrifying.
According to his former manager, Timothy Beal, Starr never forgot the genre fans who kept his work alive at conventions and screenings for decades. Beal told TMZ that the actor always appreciated his fans, particularly followers of the “Halloween” franchise.
Just one year after his second turn as Sheriff Meeker, Starr delivered what may be his most chilling performance: the abusive father of Ray Liotta’s Henry Hill in Scorsese’s “Goodfellas.” Though small in screen time, the role was unforgettable, his character beating young Henry — played by Serrone — for skipping school to work for the local mobsters. The scene remains one of the film’s defining early sequences.
Starr’s other big-screen credits included “Fletch” in 1985, “Born on the Fourth of July,” 1994’s “Speed,” “Devil in a Blue Dress” in 1995 and “Cinderella Man” in 2005, working alongside some of Hollywood’s most acclaimed directors and stars.
Television Leading Man
While supporting roles were Starr’s bread and butter, he also enjoyed two significant leading television parts. He starred as Lieutenant Bill Triplett on NBC’s crime drama “True Blue,” which aired a single 12-episode season in 1989-90.
His most enduring small-screen role came on “Due South,” the quirky odd-couple cop comedy about a Canadian Mountie teaming up with the Chicago police force. Starr played Lieutenant Harding Welsh, the gruff but warmhearted commanding officer, in every episode but one across the show’s four seasons from 1994 to 1999. The Canadian-made series, which originally aired on CTV and CBS before later seasons were co-financed by the BBC, developed a passionate cult audience on both sides of the Atlantic, as noted in a tribute following his death.
Starr’s final screen credit came in 2013, when he made an appearance on the USA Network detective comedy “Psych” — a fitting bookend for an actor who had spent so much of his career playing cops, sheriffs and lawmen. Tributes from co-stars and fans poured in over the weekend, celebrating a working actor who built a remarkable body of work one part at a time.
Starr is survived by his brother, Mike, along with children and grandchildren.