Clark Middleton(1957-2020)

He was a scene-stealer par excellence who exemplified triumph over adversity. The actor born as Clark Tinsley Middleton made a success of his profession though afflicted with crippling juvenile rheumatoid arthritis from the age of four. There were frequent recurring bouts of the ailment affecting his hands, arms and hips. In 1997, he related his struggles in an autobiographical one-man play, Miracle Mile, which he performed off-Broadway. Despite diminutive size and almost complete lack of neck movement, Middleton began performing in amateur dramatics while still at junior college and became determined to make a proper career of it. He later quit university in Arizona and at the age of 25 moved to New York to study acting under Uta Hagen and then Geraldine Page (who became his mentor) at the Mirror Repertory Theater. He then spent 15 years on stage with the New York Shakespeare Festival, the Circle Repertory Theater, the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles and various regional theatres before making his screen debut in 1983.

At first, he experienced difficulties being cast. In his own words: "They don't know what to do with me. I'm limited not by what I can do, but by what people see me as." Nevertheless, in the course of his all-too-brief career, Middleton managed to create a fascinating array of feisty, memorable characters, especially in the genre of science fiction. He is perhaps best known as James Spader's grumpy DMV tracker Glenn 'Jelly Bean' Carter in The Blacklist (2013). Equally good value was his recurring role in Fringe (2008) as an eccentric dealer in rare, antiquarian books whose esoteric knowledge often tended to prove vitally important. He made a briefer appearance in Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (2013) as Pretorious Pryce, an officious customs inspector on the planet of Kitson and was Sherilyn Fenn's perennially tired accountant husband in Twin Peaks (2017). Add to that a host of small movie character parts in high profile releases like Serendipity (2001), Kill Bill: Vol. 2 (2004), Sin City (2005) and Snowpiercer (2013).

A lifelong member of the Actor's Studio, Clark Middleton died unexpectedly at the age of 63 from the mosquito-borne disease West Nile Virus.