Bill Cobbs Biography

Character actor Bill Cobbs began his acting career relatively late in life after working odd jobs in Cleveland, OH. At the age of 36, he moved to New York and joined the Negro Ensemble Company, making his Broadway debut in First Breeze of Summer. His film career started in the late '70s with small film roles and guest appearances on television. In the early '80s, he worked on several performances for the NBC Live Theatre series and a PBS anthology with Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee. Usually cast as the token old black man dispensing words of wisdom, Cobbs' weathered-yet-honest looks got him several guest spots on TV shows from Good Times to The West Wing. He did end up with a few reoccurring roles on sitcoms like The Slap Maxwell Story, The Gregory Hines Show, and The Michael Richards Show. He even had a part in The Others, the NBC sci-fi drama answer to The X-Files. Perhaps his most memorable television appearance is his role as Regina Taylor's father on I'll Fly Away as well as in the TV movie version I'll Fly Away: Then and Now. Throughout his film career, he has built a long list of credits playing kindly fathers, grandfathers, and even Moses (in The Hudsucker Proxy). He was Whitney Houston's manager in The Bodyguard, an old man in New Jack City, and Grandpa Booker in The People Under the Stairs. Though he appears in nearly all genres of Hollywood films, he occasionally gets meatier roles in made-for-TV dramas like Carolina Skeletons, Nightjohn, and Always Outnumbered. In 2002, he played wisened elders in Sunshine State, Enough, and Sweet Deadly Dreams. ~ Andrea LeVasseur, Rovi

• 1. Mommy: Get off my property!
  2. Grandpa Booker: Just want to finish saying our piece, ma'am.
  3. Ruby: Not only are you bad landlords but 10 times worse. You've stolen all the children from our community for your own sick needs!
  4. Mommy: There's no community here, all I see are a couple of-- (the whole neighborhood shows up behind Ruby and Grandpa Booker)
  5. Ruby: What are you gonna do, shoot us all?
  From The People Under The Stairs. Submitted by Creep F (12 months ago)

• 1. Grandpa Booker: That brother and sister act you mess with are evil, plain and simple.
  2. Fool: Wait a minute, brother and sister?
  3. Grandpa Booker: Brother and sister. Tail-end of the craziest family you ever heard of, every generation more insane than the one before it. Started out as a family running a funeral home, selling cheap coffins for expensive prices. Then they got their fingers into real estate, started making a lot of money taking over people's homes. The more money they got, the greedier they got. The greedier they got, the crazier they got. All sorts of rumors about what's going on in that place. Never proved it because the police never took it serious. But believe me, when I was a kid, none of us ever walked past that house.
  From The People Under The Stairs. Submitted by Creep F (12 months ago)