Charles Brown, 57; Broadway Actor Was 2-Time Tony Nominee

Charles Brown, 57, a Broadway actor twice nominated for a Tony Award who was also familiar on television for four decades, died Jan. 8 of cancer at his home in Cleveland, Ohio.

Brown, a native of Talledega, Ala., was nominated for a Tony for best actor for his role as Cephus Miles in “Home” in 1980 and then for best featured actor for August Wilson’s “King Hedley II” in 2001.

He was the only actor to perform the Wilson play in five regional theaters -- including Los Angeles’ Mark Taper Forum -- on the way to New York.

Brown’s portrayal of the eloquent, impeccably dressed gangster Elmore, won a Drama Desk award.

The actor served in the Navy during the Vietnam War and studied acting at Howard University and the Robert Hooks’ Black Repertory Company in Washington, D.C.

He moved to New York in the 1970s, where he was active in the Negro Ensemble Company for 17 years, creating roles in two Pulitzer Prize-winning plays: “A Soldier’s Play” and “Fences.”

Brown appeared in motion pictures including “Legal Eagles” with Robert Redford, and earned guest roles on television from 1960, when he was a policeman on “Route 66,” through 1998, when he was in a television movie, “The Temptations.”

He portrayed the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. in the 1983 miniseries “Kennedy,” and had regular roles in such series as “Dream Street” in 1989 and “Here and Now” in 1992-93.