Whether he was patrolling the gritty streets of Harlem or hiding a killer’s heart behind a corporate suit, Charles Cioffi was the quintessential face of 1970s authority and its shadow. The veteran character actor, best known for his landmark roles in 'Shaft' and 'Klute,' died May 22 at the age of 90. His wife, Anne Cioffi, confirmed he died at his home in Marina del Rey, California.

In 1971, Cioffi occupied a unique cinematic space where the law and the lawless converged. As Lt. Vic Androzzi in the landmark crime drama Shaft, he provided the weary, bureaucratic foil to Richard Roundtree’s private eye. Simultaneously, he portrayed Peter Cable in the Oscar winning thriller Klute, playing a businessman whose polished exterior masked a killer’s intent. These two roles defined the authoritative yet complex persona he would perfect over the next four decades. According to Deadline, his performance opposite Jane Fonda in Klute cemented his status as a formidable screen presence.

This ability to command a scene was rooted in a rigorous classical background. Cioffi was a charter member of the Tyrone Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis, where he made his professional stage debut. As a McKnight Fellow and an instructor of speech and theatre arts at the University of Minnesota, he brought a disciplined, stage-trained gravity to his screen work. This foundation allowed him to navigate the transition from the New York stage to the gritty realism of 1970s cinema with ease. Even as he moved into film, he maintained his theatrical ties, performing in the world premiere of Arthur Miller’s Elegy for a Lady at the Long Wharf Theatre in 1982.

His longevity was bolstered by what Fandango described as an everyman look, which allowed him to blend into diverse environments. He moved from playing real-life mobster Vito Genovese in the 1973 film Lucky Luciano to the blue-collar world of 1983’s All the Right Moves, where he played the father of Tom Cruise’s character. Whether he was a police captain in the action series Get Christie Love! or Captain Ray Tower in the political thriller Missing, he remained a reliable anchor for the audience.

In the 1990s, Cioffi’s range expanded into the heightened drama of daytime television. He became a memorable figure for soap opera fans as the vengeance-fueled Ernesto Toscano on Days of Our Lives during the 1990 Cruise of Deception storyline. Shortly after, he entered the world of science fiction as Section Chief Scott Blevins in the pilot of The X-Files. As noted by Forbes, he returned to the series in later seasons, continuing his streak of playing high-ranking officials with hidden depths.

His influence reached into unexpected corners of popular culture, including a vocal appearance on Pink Floyd’s album The Wall. A scene from his work on the drama Another World was used as background audio in the song One of My Turns, a testament to his ubiquitous presence in the American media landscape. Even in his later years, he adapted to new mediums, voicing characters like Chairman Richard Prescott and Adam Fenix in the 2008 video game Gears of War 2. He is survived by his wife, Anne, and their two sons.

Charles Cioffi was more than a character actor: he was the steady pulse of American storytelling across theater, film, and television. He possessed the rare ability to make authority feel both comforting and dangerous, often within the same performance. By grounding his roles in the discipline of the classics and the grit of the street, he created a body of work that remains a definitive record of an era when the lines between the hero and the villain were perpetually blurred.