Barnard Hughes

Gender: Male
Religion: Roman Catholic
Race or Ethnicity: White
Sexual orientation: Straight
Occupation: Actor

Barnard Hughes was an American actor who had a long but little-noticed career until middle age, when he achieved success on stage. He had recurring roles on several long-running soap operas, including the Guiding Light and As the World Turns, and as he reached old age he became a familiar "Grandpa" on TV and in occasional films through the 1980s and 90s. Hughes was well into his senior citizenship when he starred in the short-lived prime-time sitcom Mr. Merlin, playing a magician who ran an auto repair shop. Ten years later, at the age of 76, he played "Grandpa Buzz" on Blossom.

In films, he was hooker Jon Voight's last customer in Midnight Cowboy, Diana Rigg's father in The Hospital, the war-crazy Colonel in Where's Poppa?, and the vampire-hunting grandfather in The Lost Boys. Perhaps most memorably, Hughes played the High Priest in the early video game epic Tron.

Hughes appeared in more than 400 plays, won the Tony in 1978 for the title role in Da, and reprised that role in a film version ten years later. His son, Doug Hughes, is a Broadway stage director who won the 2005 Tony for John Patrick Shanley's Pulitzer Prize-winning Doubt.