Carl Weathers, who starred as Apollo Creed in the "Rocky" franchise along with numerous other movies over five-plus decades has died according to multiple reports. He was 76-years old.
Matt Luber, his manager, said Weathers died Thursday. His family issued a statement saying he died “peacefully in his sleep.”
A native of New Orleans, Weathers originally started out as an athlete, playing football at San Diego State, the Oakland Raiders and with the B.C. Lions of the Canadian Football League before turning to acting.
He had his first significant roles in two blaxploitation films of the 1970s before appearing in a handful of television programs of the time.
Weathers got his big break in 1976 when he was cast alongside Sylvester Stallone in Rocky as the outspoken heavyweight champion of the world, Apollo Creed. He would go on to portray Creed in three more Rocky films.
“It puts you on the map and makes your career, so to speak. But that’s a one-off, so you’ve got to follow it up with something. Fortunately those movies kept coming, and Apollo Creed became more and more in people’s consciousness and welcome in their lives, and it was just the right guy at the right time,” he told The Daily Beast in 2017.
Always known as a muscular "he-man", Creed flexed alongside Arnold Schwarzenegger in 1987's Predator, which also included professional wrestler and future Governor of Minnesota Jesse Ventura. He also starred in the 1988 movie Action Jackson.
He's also remembered for his turn in Adam Sandler's comedy Happy Gilmore, playing "Chubbs", a golf legend who lost a hand to an alligator.
Weathers continued acting including a role in the 2019 Star Wars series, The Mandalorian.
He is survived by an ex-wife and two sons.