He was 87 years old. Charles Dierkop was a character actor who was best known for his work in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. Dierkop died on Sunday, February 25, at Sherman Oaks Hospital in Los Angeles.
He played the bad guy George “Flat Nose” Curry in the classic Western movie starring Paul Newman and Robert Redford. According to his daughter Lynn, he died after having a heart attack and getting pneumonia.
Dierkop’s other big roles were in the caper movie The Sting with Newman and Redford again, and in the police procedural Police Woman with Angie Dickinson.
Dierkop joined the US military and served in Korea after the Korean War ended. He was born in La Crosse, Wisconsin, in 1936. After getting out of the army, he went to Philadelphia to study at the American Foundation of Dramatic Arts and tried to get a job in Hollywood.
When asked why he was good for the role of Butch Cassidy in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (2018), Dierkop said that his broken nose made him more like an outlaw. “My agent read a script on a plane, and it says, “Flat Nose Curry.” In an interview with Rob Word, he said, “I think I have someone in mind.” “So I had an interview with [director] George Roy Hill and was cast right away.” They were married from 1958 until 1974. Dierkop met Joan Addis at the American Foundation of Dramatic Arts and they got married. They had two kids together: a son named Charles Jr., who died at age 29, and a daughter named Lynn.
