‘Felicity,’ ‘Friday the 13th’ Actor Was 67
Erich Anderson, the familiar character actor who made his film debut in Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter, played Keri Russell‘s father on Felicity and recurred on shows from Steven Bochco, has died. He was 67.
Anderson died Saturday after a “brutal struggle with cancer,” his wife, Saxon Trainor, and her brother-in-law, Michael O’Malley, announced in an Instagram post.
In Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter (1984), Anderson portrayed Rob Dier, who while attempting to avenge his sister’s death meets his brutal end at the hands of Jason in a basement.
He appeared as Dr. Edward Porter, father of Russell’s Felicity Porter, in the 1998 pilot for Felicity, then returned for eight more episodes of the WB network show during the series’ four-season run through 2002.
For Bochco, Anderson played pitcher Bobby Stang on NBC’s Bay City Blues in 1983-84 and drug dealer Don Kirkendall on ABC’s NYPD Blue in 2000, and he guest-starred on ABC’s Civil Wars in 1993.
Erich Anderson with Keri Russell on ‘Felicity’
Everett
Born in 1957 in Sagamahara, Japan, Edward Erich Anderson came from a military family. After graduating from Hilltop High School in Chula Vista, California, he earned a degree in biochemistry and molecular biology from the University of California Santa Barbara.
The short-lived Bay City Blues was one of his first onscreen gigs.
Anderson also played a comic-book artist who has a romance with Polly Draper’s Ellyn Warren on ABC’s thirtysomething in 1990-91 and recurred in 2017-18 as a wealthy parent seeking to get a traffic ticket taken care of by Titus Welliver’s cop on Prime Video’s Bosch.
Over the years, Anderson worked on shows from Murder, She Wrote, Dallas, Star Trek: The Next Generation, Sisters and 7th Heaven to Chicago Hope, The X-Files, Boston Public, Boomtown, House, Monk and Franklin & Bash.
His film résumé included turns in Patty Hearst (1988), Bat*21 (1988), The Glass Shield (1994), Nightwatch (1997), Beyond Suspicion (2000), Unfaithful (2002) and The Neighbor (2017).
He also published three novels: 2012’s Hallowed Be Thy Name, 2014’s Thy Kingdom Come and 2022’s Rabbit: A Golf Fable.
