Paul Benedict, 70; actor at home in TV sitcoms, modern and classical dramas

Paul Benedict, in Harold Pinter's ''No Man's Land'' at the ART.

In an acting troupe that included Robert De Niro, Dustin Hoffman, and Al Pacino, the person who stood out more than any other in the Theatre Company of Boston during the 1960s was Paul Benedict. The long-jawed actor who found a touch of menace in the most comic parts and a touch of the absurd in the most serious roles, was found dead Monday at 70 of unknown causes on Martha's Vineyard.

Mr. Benedict, who also acted locally with the American Repertory Theatre, would have his own share of success on television and in the movies, playing the English neighbor Harry Bentley on the CBS series "The Jeffersons" from 1975 to 1985. He also appeared in the Christopher Guest comedies "This Is Spinal Tap," "Waiting for Guffman," and "A Mighty Wind."

His long face was, in part, a result of acromegaly, a pituitary disorder that was first diagnosed by an audience member, an endocrinologist, at one of his Theatre Company performances.

Theatre Company founder David Wheeler, who directed Mr. Benedict there and at ART and remained a close friend, recalled the joy he spread. "From the point he came into the theater, it was one continuous round of laughter," Wheeler said yesterday. "My wife, Bronia, would always ask him to tell her a joke before he got off the phone, and then break up in laughter."

As an actor, Mr. Benedict "could do so much with his voice and body," Wheeler added. "He could do any kind of comedy from the knockabout and outrageous to more subtle and verbal roles. . . . He found the characters."

Mr. Benedict grew up in Boston and attended Suffolk University. After that, he told The New York Times in a 1990 interview, he "walked into the center of Boston, to a local theater, the Charles Playhouse. They said they needed a janitor and they'd pay 15 bucks a week. I said I'd take it. . . . Within a year I was building sets and running the box office."

He became a regular at the Theatre Company of Boston from 1963 to 1968 before moving to New York. He loved Martha's Vineyard, though, where he had a summer home. (He was renting the place where his body was found.) ART founder Robert Brustein recalled yesterday that unlike his neighbors, Mr. Benedict did not try to get rid of the many raccoons in the neighborhood.

"He had this wonderful devotion to the Vineyard, where he collected raccoons and fed them," Brustein said.

Mr. Benedict and Brustein often appeared in readings together at the Vineyard Playhouse. While he acknowledged Mr. Benedict's "long run" on television, Brustein said that didn't capture his gifts as an actor, which were best shown in classical and modern plays.

"He excelled in mystery, the mystery of the character," Brustein said. "He was very good about withholding the obvious, who this man [character] was. He was a very good Pinter actor and a very good Beckett actor for that reason. The unspoken, the pauses between the words, are more important than the words themselves. He had that face, those deep-set eyes and enigmatic smile. I would have cast him in anything."

His last ART performance was in May 2007, in Pinter's "No Man's Land." He played Hirst, a character facing his mortality. "It didn't matter that it was a part made famous by Ralph Richardson," said Wheeler, who directed the show. "He was undaunted."

He was also good. "Benedict infuses Hirst with complexity and pleasingly baffling ambiguity," Globe critic Louise Kennedy wrote. "If we never know quite who this man is, we still can't stop thinking about him."

In the Times interview, Mr. Benedict expressed no bitterness over being typecast as an oddball. What he said of playing the pompous Professor Fleeber in the film, "The Freshman," could describe his approach to all his roles: "I try to make each of the characters different. I think the trick is to cement in the reality, to make it logical and real to yourself. Once there's a reality, I think you can make it as crazy as you want it to be."

Mr. Benedict leaves a brother, Charles of Newton.