ACTOR
Robert Ryan
- Known for
- Bad Day at Black Rock (1955), The Professionals (1966), The Outfit (1973), Billy Budd (1962)
40 archived facts 5 topics 1 source Last reviewed Oct 2026
Robert Ryan is an actor best known for Bad Day at Black Rock, The Professionals and The Outfit.
24 Interesting Facts About Robert Ryan
- #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.
- #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.
- #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.
- #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.
- #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.
- #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.
- #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.
- #034
Ryan ran Eugene McCarthy's campaign in the 1968 Democratic primaries.
- #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.
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