ACTOR
Robert Ryan
40 archived facts 5 topics 1 source Last reviewed Oct 2026
All facts (40)
- #001
Robert Ryan served in the United States Marine Corps from 1944 to 1947.
- #002
Actors Jeff Bridges and Kris Kristofferson named Ryan as their favorite actor.
- #003
Shortly before his death, Ryan moved out of his apartment (number 72) at the Dakota in New York City. Ryan rented the apartment to John Lennon and Yoko Ono (and later sold the property).
- #004
Shortly before his death from lung cancer at the age of sixty-three, Ryan publicly blamed his heavy smoking for his illness.
- #005
While filming Flying Leathernecks (1951), Ryan managed to get along with John Wayne, but was appalled by Wayne's active support of the Hollywood blacklist. During the shooting of The Longest Day (1962), however, the two stars did not get along at all.
- #006
In an interview about Scene by Scene (1997), Jeff Bridges tells an anecdote about Ryan during the filming of The Iceman Cometh (1973). The young Bridges noticed a pool of sweat forming under Ryan's hand on the table and realized that, despite his granite demeanor, the veteran star was nervous about the take they were about to shoot. When Bridges asked him about it, Ryan replied, 'If I weren't scared, I'd really be scared.'.
- #007
Toward the end of World War II, Ryan met his fellow Marine Richard Brooks in the Camp Pendleton library. Brooks's first novel, 'The Brick Foxhole,' had just been published, and Ryan told him he was an actor determined to play the villain if a film version were made. Ryan insisted, 'I know that son of a bitch. Nobody knows him better than I do.' Two years later, outside the theater where Crossfire (1947) had just opened, Ryan — the actor who had indeed played the Montgomery role he once sought — was able to ask the writer Brooks, 'What do you think?'.
- #008
In 1973 he played the terminally ill political activist Larry Slade in The Iceman Cometh (1973). Ironically, during filming he knew he was approaching the final stages of lung cancer, and he died that July. His wife Jessica had also died a year earlier, having lost her battle with cancer.
- #009
Because of his tall build, brutally lined face and a seething intensity rare among the 'tough guys' of his generation, he usually played hateful villains. Even in the rare cases when he played a good man, they tended to have a fierce, obsessive personality that was somewhat unsettling.
- #010
He was a founder of SANE (the anti-nuclear action group) and a vocal supporter of the Hollywood Ten, who were blacklisted in the 1950s.
- #011
He was a close friend of Lee Marvin.
- #012
According to his RKO biography, Ryan worked as a 'sandhog, sailor, sewer builder, salesman, miner, cowboy, a gangster's bodyguard-chauffeur, photographer's model, W. P. A. laborer and curb attendant.'.
- #013
Jeff Bridges said that when they appeared together in The Iceman Cometh (1973), he learned a great deal about acting from working with Ryan.
- #014
In 1959, together with John Houseman and Sidney Harmon, he founded the Theatre Group at the University of California, Los Angeles. Nine years later, in 1968, he founded the Plumstead Playhouse Repertory Company with Henry Fonda and Martha Scott.
- #015
At Dartmouth College, Ryan was on the boxing team and compiled a 5-0 record (3 knockouts). He also worked on the campus newspaper and campaigned against Prohibition.
- #016
He initially planned to train at the Pasadena Playhouse, but instead became a student of Max Reinhardt in the late 1930s, where he met his fellow student and future wife Jessica Cadwalader. After they married, she gave up her acting dreams and later became a writer of children's fiction.
- #017
His funeral was held on July 16, 1973, at the Blessed Sacrament Church on 71st Street in Manhattan. Jason Robards, Myrna Loy, Dore Schary and John McGiver attended the service.
- #018
His granddaughter Katharine, the daughter of his son Walker, is a research associate at Oregon Health & Science University in Portland, Oregon. She was named after her godmother, Katharine Hepburn.
- #019
As a former heavy smoker, he had been treated for lung cancer for the first time several years before his death.
- #020
Robert Ryan helped found Oakwood, a prestigious Los Angeles school.
- #021
Ryan was originally intended to play "Commodore Matt Decker" in The Doomsday Machine (1967), but was unable to do so. The character was conceived as a Captain Ahab type obsessed with avenging the loss of his crew. The role instead went to William Windom, who portrayed Decker in a more tragic and sensitive manner.
- #022
Ryan's son Cheyney C. Ryan is a Research Fellow at Oxford University and a professor of Philosophy and Law at the University of Oregon. As a Harvard student, he was expelled for his fiery activism in civil rights and anti-war movements.
- #023
When Ryan was eight years old, his younger brother died of influenza.
- #024
When Ryan was 26 years old, his father was killed after being struck by a car.
- #025
Ryan's paternal grandparents were Irish immigrants from Thurles, County Tipperary. His mother was of English and Irish origin, partly by way of Canada, and had deep Colonial American roots.
- #026
Ryan had two sons, Walker (born April 13, 1946) and Cheyney (born March 10, 1948), and a daughter, Lisa (born September 10, 1951).
- #027
When Ryan was diagnosed with cancer, he had been set to play "Don Quixote" in a film version of Miguel Cervantes's novel. However, a year after Peter O'Toole appeared in the film version of the Broadway musical "Man of La Mancha" (Man of La Mancha (1972)), the person ultimately seen as Don in a 1973 television film of the book was Rex Harrison.
- #028
Ryan was considered for the role of Messala in Ben-Hur (1959), a part that went to Stephen Boyd.
- #029
For high school, Ryan attended Loyola Academy in Wilmette, Illinois, class of 1927, where he competed All-City in his final year and played football for four years.
- #030
At Dartmouth, Ryan pledged Psi Upsilon, where one of his fraternity brothers was Nelson Rockefeller.
- #031
Ryan married his wife, Jessica Cadawalader, on March 11, 1939, at St. Thomas Episcopal Church in West Hollywood.
- #032
Ryan appeared in Petticoat Fever at the La Jolla Playhouse in San Diego in the summer of 1949, and returned in July 1950 to appear in Garson Kanin's Born Yesterday.
- #033
Ryan appeared in two films nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture: Crossfire (1947) and The Longest Day (1962). Robert Mitchum also appeared in both of these films.
- #034
Ryan ran Eugene McCarthy's campaign in the 1968 Democratic primaries.
- #035
Through his son Cheyney, Ryan has three grandchildren: Tammy, Lisa and Jeff.
- #036
In 1968, Ryan attended the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, where he served as a McCarthy delegate. Through his friendship with Joan Crawford, who served on the board of the Pepsi-Cola Company, he managed to obtain an entry pass for his anti-war activist son Cheyney via a company representative who conveyed her regards.
- #037
Ryan was reported to have been a candidate for the role of Samson in Samson and Delilah (1949).
- #038
In New York City, NY, USA, Film Forum is showing a series of two dozen Ryan films.
- #039
In the summer of 1941, Ryan appeared at the Cape Playhouse in Dennis, Massachusetts, where he acted alongside Luise Rainer in J. M. Barrie's A Kiss For Cinderella.
- #040
While at university, Robert Ryan was the heavyweight boxing champion for four years.
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