Carroll O'Connor

John Carroll O'Connor (August 2, 1924 – June 21, 2001) was an American actor, producer, and director whose television career spanned four decades. A lifelong member of the Actors Studio, O'Connor first attracted attention as Major General Colt in the 1970 film Kelly's Heroes. The following year, he found fame as the bigoted working man Archie Bunker, the main character in the 1970s CBS television sitcoms All in the Family (1971–1979) and Archie Bunker's Place (1979–1983). O'Connor later starred in the NBC/CBS television crime drama In the Heat of the Night from 1988 to 1995, where he played the role of southern Police Chief William (Bill) Gillespie. At the end of his career in the late 1990s, he played the father of Jamie Buchman (Helen Hunt) on Mad About You. In 1996, O'Connor was ranked number 38 on TV Guide's 50 Greatest TV Stars of All Time. 2Early life Carroll O'Connor, an Irish American, was the eldest of three sons. He was born on August 2, 1924, in Manhattan, New York City, to Edward Joseph O'Connor, a lawyer, and his wife, Elise Patricia O'Connor. Both of his brothers became doctors: Hugh, who died in a motorcycle accident in 1961, and Robert, a psychiatrist in New York City. O'Connor spent much of his youth in Elmhurst and Forest Hills, Queens, the same borough in which his character Archie Bunker would later liv