Bill Cobbs

Bill Cobbs
Cobbs at the premiere of Oz the Great and Powerful, Los Angeles, February 13, 2013
Born	Wilbert Cobbs (1934-06-16) June 16, 1934 Cleveland, Ohio
Nationality	American
Occupation	Actor
Years active	1973-present
Family	James Baskett (cousin)

Wilbert "Bill" Cobbs (born June 16, 1934) is an American film and television actor. He has starred in over 120 television programs and movies.

Early life

Bill Cobbs was born in Cleveland, Ohio, to a mother who was a domestic worker and a father who worked in construction.

Career

As an amateur actor in the city's Karamu House Theater, he starred in the Ossie Davis play Purlie Victorious. Cobbs was an Air Force radar technician for eight years; he also worked in office products at IBM and sold cars in Cleveland. In 1970, at the age of 36, he left for New York to seek work as an actor. There he turned down a job in the NBC sales department in order to have time for auditions. He supported himself by driving a cab, repairing office equipment, selling toys, and performing odd jobs. His first professional acting role was in Ride a Black Horse at the Negro Ensemble Company. From there he appeared in small theater productions, street theater, regional theater, and at the Eugene O'Neill Theatre.

Cobbs was in Vegetable Soup (1976), a New York public television educational series, and he made his feature film debut in The Taking of Pelham One Two Three in 1974. Cobbs has an extensive film career and has appeared and been a regular on many television programs, including The Michael Richards Show, The Outer Limits, I'll Fly Away, Yes, Dear, The Sopranos, Six Feet Under, The Others, JAG, The Drew Carey Show, October Road, One Tree Hill, and many more. He had a recurring role as George, a blind grief-support-group member, in the TV series, Go On, which premiered in 2012.

In 2006, Cobbs played a supporting role in Night at the Museum as Reginald, a security guard on the verge of retirement. The character also served as an antagonist to the story. He played basketball coach and retired basketball player Arthur Chaney in Disney's Air Bud and Medgar Evers' older brother Charles Evers in Rob Reiner's Ghosts of Mississippi. He had a role in the Coen Brothers' The Hudsucker Proxy and played a jazz pianist in Tom Hanks' That Thing You Do.

He recorded a public service announcement for Deejay Ra's Hip-Hop Literacy2 campaign, encouraging reading of Ice-T's autobiography.

Filmography

Cobbs on the set of Get Low in 2009

• The Taking of Pelham One Two Three (1974)
• A Hero Ain't Nothin' but a Sandwich (1978)
• Greased Lightning (1977)
• Trading Places (1983)
• Silkwood (1983)
• The Brother from Another Planet (1984)
• The Cotton Club (1984)
• Compromising Positions (1985)
• The Color of Money (1986)
• Five Corners (1987)
• Suspect (1987)
• Dominick and Eugene (1988)
• Bird (1988)
• The January Man (1989)
• Decoration Day (1990)
• New Jack City (1991)
• Carolina Skeletons (1991)
• The Hard Way (1991)
• The People Under the Stairs (1991)
• Roadside Prophets (1992)
• The Bodyguard (1992)
• Demolition Man (1993)
• The Hudsucker Proxy (1994)
• Things to Do in Denver When You're Dead (1995)
• Fluke (1995)
• Ed (1996)
• First Kid (1996)
• That Thing You Do! (1996)
• Ghosts of Mississippi (1996)
• Air Bud (1997)
• Always Outnumbered (1998)
• Paulie (1998)
• Hope Floats (1998)
• I Still Know What You Did Last Summer (1998)
• The Wild Thornberrys (1998)
• Random Hearts (1999)
• The Others (2000) Series regular as Elmer Greentree
• Rugrats (2001)
• Sunshine State (2002)
• Enough (2002)
• A Mighty Wind (2003)
• Lost (2004)
• Duck (2005)
• The Derby Stallion (2005)
• Star Trek: Enterprise (2005)
• Hard Luck (2006)
• Night at the Museum (2006)
• The Ultimate Gift (2007)
• Three Days to Vegas (2007)
• The Morgue (2008)
• Santa Buddies: The Legend of Santa Paws (2009)
• Black Water Transit (2009)
• My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done (2010)
• No Limit Kids: Much Ado About Middle School (2010)
• Get Low (2010)
• The Search for Santa Paws (2010)
• The Arcadian (2010)
• The Muppets (2011)
• Oz the Great and Powerful (2013)

External links

• Bill Cobbs at the Internet Movie Database
• Bill Cobbs at Memory Alpha (a Star Trek wiki)