‘Home Alone’ character actor Roberts Blossom dies

SANTA MONICA, Calif. (AP) — Character actor Roberts Blossom, who played the white-bearded neighbor “old man Marley” in the movie “Home Alone,” has died at age 87 in Southern California.

Daughter Deborah Blossom tells the Los Angeles Times that her father died of natural causes July 8 at a Santa Monica nursing home.

Blossom starred on Broadway, as well as in television and movies. He won three Obie Awards for his off-Broadway work.

Movie credits include “The Hospital,” ”Slaughterhouse-Five,” ”The Great Gatsby,” ”Close Encounters of the Third Kind,” ”Escape From Alcatraz,” ”Resurrection” and “Doc Hollywood.” Blossom had a starring role in the 1974 cult horror movie “Deranged.”

But he may be best-remembered as the neighbor in 1990’s “Home Alone”

Blossom’s TV credits include “Another World,” ”Moonlighting,” ”Northern Exposure” and “In the Heat of the Night.”