Dean Stockwell of 'Quantum Leap,' 'Blue Velvet' dies at 85

Dean Stockwell, a top Hollywood child actor who gained new success in middle age, garnering an Oscar nomination for “Married to the Mob” and Emmy nominations for “Quantum Leap,” has died

NEW YORK -- Dean Stockwell, a top Hollywood child actor who gained new success in middle age in the sci-fi series “Quantum Leap” and in a string of indelible performances in film, including David Lynch's “Blue Velvet,” Wim Wenders' “Paris, Texas” and Jonathan Demme's “Married to the Mob,” has died. He was 85.

Jay Schwartz, a family spokesperson, said Stockwell died of natural causes at home Sunday.

Stockwell was Oscar-nominated for his comic mafia kingpin in “Married to the Mob” and was four times an Emmy-nominee for “Quantum Leap.” But in a career that spanned seven decades, Stockwell was a supreme character actor whose performances — lip-syncing Roy Orbison in a nightmarish party scene in “Blue Velvet,” a desperate agent in Robert Altman's “The Player,” Howard Hughes in Francis Ford Coppola’s “Tucker: The Man and His Dream” — didn't have to be lengthy to be mesmerizing.

Stockwell's own relationship with acting, having started on Broadway at age 7, was complicated. In a peripatetic career, he quit show business several times, including at age 16 and again in the 1980s, when he moved to Santa Fe, New Mexico, to sell real estate.