Whitney Rydbeck, Friday the 13th actor, dies at 79

Whitney Rydbeck, an actor and mime perhaps best known as one of Jason Voorhies’ victims in the sixth Friday the 13th movie — as well as one of the original crash test dummies in a memorable public service campaign for seat belts — died July 15 after battling cancer. He was 79.

Whitney Rydbeck in ‘Jason Lives: Friday the `3 Part VI’.

Paramount pictures

Rydbeck played Roy in 1986’s Jason Lives: Friday the 13th Part VI, a part director Tom McLoughlin says he wrote specifically for him.

“I’m heartbroken to share this past Monday night we lost the wonderfully talented physical comedian/actor Whitney Rydbeck,” McLoughlin said in a statement to Entertainment Weekly. “He played Roy the nerdy businessman/paintball player. His comic performance is still making audiences and fans laugh almost 40 years later.”

“I have worked with Whitney for over 53 years,” McLoughlin’s statement continues. “We’ve collaborated on so many projects together. Some as comic partners on stage and film, others on projects I wrote and directed. I specifically wrote the Roy part in Jason Lives for him knowing his unique talent. We also became close friends over these past decades. “He’s truly the kindest, heartfelt, and lovable person I have known. Seeing him struggling with cancer this past year and a half has been beyond heartbreaking.”

Whitney Wilbert Rydbeck was born in Los Angeles on March 13, 1945 . In the early 1970s, he and McLoughlin were members of the Richmond Shepard Mime Troupe and the L.A. Mime Company, which McLoughlin founded. Rydbeck made his acting debut on a 1970 episode of Nanny and the Professor. He went on to put his mime talents to work on the 1973 Woody Allen film Sleeper and later appeared in Rocky II and the Steven Spielberg film 1941, both from 1979.

Rydbeck appeared in over 50 movies and television shows from 1970 through 2007, including The Brady Bunch, Lassie, M*A*S*H, Star Trek: The Next Generation, Murder, She Wrote, 3rd Rock from the Sun, Party of Five, and Scrubs.

In the 1980s and ’90s, Rydbeck, along with fellow actor Tony Reitano, portrayed crash test dummies Vince and Larry in a series of PSAs for the Department of Transportation — though Jack Burns voiced Vince and Lorenzo Music voiced Larry. In 2010, Rydbeck and Reitano were on hand at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History where Vince and Larry’s bodies were donated for display.

Rydbeck joked with The Washington Post that he used to worry about the day newspapers would carry the headline, “Actor Who Played Crash Dummy Died for Not Buckling Up.”

“I always buckle up,” he told The Post. “I’ll tell you that.”