Actor Ronny Cox was spotted in Los Angeles on July 23, his 88th birthday, tending to a household chore. He wore a Route 66 cap, a red long-sleeve shirt, slacks and trainers while moving garbage cans to their appropriate spots.
The Daily Mail has contacted a representative for Cox for comment.
Cox is known for playing Lieutenant Andrew Bogomil in the 1984 film Beverly Hills Cop and its sequel, Beverly Hills Cop 2. He also played Capt. Edward Jellico in Star Trek: The Next Generation, the villainous Dick Jones in RoboCop, and appeared in Total Recall. He has also had roles in Murder, She Wrote, Desperate Housewives and Dexter, in which he played a serial killer known as the "Tooth Fairy."
A life-changing break
Cox made his big screen debut in the 1972 film Deliverance, alongside Jon Voight, Burt Reynolds and Ned Beatty. At the time, he was a struggling actor in New York and a stay-at-home dad for much of the time, raising two young sons with his wife, Mary, a Ph.D. chemist from Georgetown who was doing a four-year post-doc in cancer research at Sloan Kettering in New York.
"It sounds cliché, but it was life-changing for me," Cox told the AV Club in 2022. "My wife Mary was a Ph.D. chemist from Georgetown and then had a four-year post-doc with Sloan Kettering in New York, doing cancer research. I was a struggling New York actor and a stay-at-home dad a lot of the time. When I got Deliverance, I'd never made more than $6,000 in one year. It changed our lives drastically because Mary and I had two small boys, too."
One of the top actors in the world
Cox went on to become one of the top actors in Hollywood. "I hate to be bragging too much, but there was a time there where I was in every film made," he told the AV Club. "There was a period between the early/middle '80s and late '90s where they used to keep track of the top actors in the world."
"This sounds self-aggrandizing, but they kept track of the top 100 actors, and the way they kept score was with the actors who'd been in the movies that made the most money. I was number 49 out of 100. I did a lot of stuff," he said.
Cox has called RoboCop as important to his career as his debut. "Deliverance was my big breakout, but in many ways, RoboCop was as big a boon to my career," he told the AV Club.
A shift toward music
In recent years, Cox has focused on music, releasing 11 albums and touring around the globe. He has called music his "first love" and now prioritizes it over acting.
"Most people know of my acting career, but not so many know of my life-long love and dedication to music," he wrote on his website. "These days, I spend less time acting and more time as a singer-songwriter performing at folk festivals, concert venues and small intimate theaters all over the United States. Music is my first love, and allows me a really special connection to audiences, a connection that works both ways."
"I'd just rather play music these days," he told The Wichita Eagle in 2012. "I won't let any movie or television show interfere with any gig that I have booked. They have to work around me or I won't take it."
Cox released his autobiography, Dueling Banjos: The Deliverance of Drew, in 2012. He was married to his childhood friend, Mary Cox, from 1960 until she died in 2006. They had two sons together.
