Bio
Peter Boyle was an Emmy Award-winning Irish-American actor best known for his role as Frank Barone on the sitcom Everybody Loves Raymond and his film roles in Young Frankenstein (1974) and Taxi Driver (1976).
Boyle rose to stardom in 1970 when he played an angry construction worker in the movie Joe.
Four years later his big break came in the movie Young Frankenstein, in which he played a tap-dancing monster in a top hat.
Boyle met his future wife Loraine Alterman, a Rolling Stone reporter, on the set of Young Frankenstein, asking her for a date while still in monster make-up.
Alterman was a close friend of Yoko Ono and Boyle became good friends with John Lennon, who was the best man at his wedding.
Boyle notably turned down numerous roles in which violence was glorified, including the lead role of Popeye Doyle in the 1971 hit The French Connection (the role went to Gene Hackman when Boyle turned it down).
He appeared in Taxi Driver with Robert de Niro, playing fellow taxi driver Wizard; The Candidate with Robert Redford; The Dream Team with Michael Keaton; as a tough police officer in Malcolm X and as the racist, bigoted father to Billy Bob Thornton's character in the 2001 film Monster's Ball.
In 1990, Boyle suffered a stroke that rendered him speechless for six months. After recovering, he went on to win an Emmy award in 1996 for Outstanding Guest Actor in a Drama Series, for an appearance on The X-Files.
He starred as Frank Barone on Everybody Loves Raymond from 1996 - 2005, suffering a heart attack on set in 1999 from which he recovered to continue working.
Boyle died in New York on Tuesday 12 December 2006, after a protracted battle with multiple myeloma and heart disease.
He was 71.