Ron Dean, Risky Business and Breakfast Club actor, dies at 87

Ron Dean, a veteran character actor known for roles in Risky Business and The Breakfast Club, died on October 5 at age 87, his partner Maggie Neff said. Neff said he died at a Chicago hospital at 4 p.m., after his sisters had come to say their goodbyes. She added that Dean had been battling a long illness, though no official cause of death has been released.

Born in Chicago on August 15, 1938, Dean built a four-decade career playing often-gruff, working-class characters, frequently portraying police officers and other authority figures. He began appearing on screen in the mid-1970s and gained early notice with a small role in the 1983 Tom Cruise film Risky Business. Two years later he played the father of Emilio Estevez’s character in John Hughes’s The Breakfast Club. Other notable film credits include The Color of Money, Cocktail, The Fugitive, Chain Reaction and Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight, in which he portrayed Detective Wuertz.

Dean was a frequent collaborator with director Andrew Davis, who cast him in multiple films including Code of Silence, Above the Law, The Guardian and Steal Big Steal Little. Davis said Dean was “my dear friend and a tremendous actor” and...