Bully From Dazed and Confused Dead at 54

Nicky Katt, who started out as a child actor before moving on to adult roles in the film Dazed and Confused and ABC's Boston Public, has died at the age of 54. Katt's attorney confirmed his death, without offering further details, per the Hollywood Reporter and New York Times, but law enforcement sources tell TMZ that Katt's death is an apparent suicide, after the actor's landlord found him Tuesday hanging inside his LA-area residence. Those sources say the landlord had first approached Katt a week earlier about rent money owed, and when the landlord came back on Tuesday, the door to Katt's apartment was open.

Katt's body was found in his bedroom, where he'd apparently been dead for more than a day. The South Dakota native started out as a kid acting in such TV shows as Fantasy Island, CHiPS, Father Murphy, and Herbie, the Love Bug. Once an adult, Katt earned a reputation as a "bully with a gift for getting gritty" as Clint Bruno in Richard Linklater's 1993 coming-of-age movie Dazed and Confused, per HuffPost. He also starred as geology teacher Harry Senate in the David E. Kelley drama Boston Public, which aired on Fox in the early aughts.

Other credits include the movies A Time to Kill, School of Rock, and Batman & Robin, and TV series Law & Order, Monk, and King of the Hill. His last acting credit on IMDb is listed in 2018, in the TV series Casual. In a 2002 interview with the Los Angeles Times, Katt talked about his frustrations with Hollywood, noting, "There's so much desperation in the air" and describing the "low-level malevolence" he felt existed in LA. "Sometimes I think if I did more situps and went to the tanning salon, I could have a lot more power than I do now," he said at the time. "At the end of the day, you do what your gut tells you to do." TMZ hosts a gallery of Katt through the years here. (If you or someone you know is struggling, please call or text the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline at 988.)