Bill Cobbs, ‘Bodyguard’ and ‘Night at the Museum’ Actor, Dies at 90

Bill Cobbs, a prolific character actor whose half-century career bloomed while he was middle-aged and ranged from “Sesame Street” to “The Sopranos” to “Night at the Museum,” died on Tuesday evening. He was 90.

His death, at his home in the Inland Empire region of California, was announced on social media by his brother, Thomas G. Cobbs, and confirmed by his agent, Carmela Evangelista. No cause of death was given.

Mr. Cobbs was not a Hollywood star, but his face was one anyone who watched TV or movies over the past several decades could recognize. He appeared in more than 200 films and television shows and was also a prominent theater actor.

Born Wilbert Francisco Cobbs in Cleveland, Mr. Cobbs spent eight years working as a radar technician in the Air Force, where he started doing standup comedy, he said in a 2012 interview with the podcast “Movie Geeks United.” He also worked at I.B.M. and as a car salesman.

His experience in the Ossie Davis play “Purlie Victorious,” a comedy about a Black preacher’s efforts to reclaim his hometown church, had an especially profound effect on his career.

“That play taught me that there were a lot of things I could say in theater, on the stage and in movies and in television, that were very important, that were meaningful things, that in addition to being a means of entertaining people and touching them in different ways, there were things you could say related to the human condition,” he said.