John Heard of Home Alone, Dead at 72
Actor John Heard, best known for playing Macaulay Culkin's dad in the Home Alone movies, has died at 72.
The coroner's office in Santa Clara County, Calif., confirmed his death to The Hollywood Reporter and Variety on Saturday morning.
His body was discovered in a hotel room near Stanford Medical Center in Palo Alto, where he had recently undergone back surgery.
In addition to his role as Peter McAllister in the Home Alone franchise, Heard also starred as a coworker to Tom Hanks in the 1988 comedy Big and a dirty cop in the first season of HBO's The Sopranos, for which he earned a guest-acting Emmy nomination in 1999.
Heard's other credits include films The Milagro Beanfield War and Beaches (both released in 1988) and the John Grisham adaptation The Pelican Brief (1993). He also starred in the TV adaptation of the author's 1993 novel The Client and had guest roles in the CSI franchise.
Heard was married three times: first to Superman actress Margot Kidder, in the late 1970s, then to Sharon Heard from 1988 to 1996, with whom he had two children (son Max and daughter Annika) and finally, Lana Pritchard for less than a year in 2010.
He also had another son, Jack, the subject of a bitter custody dispute with former partner and future Oscar-winning actress Melissa Leo. She and her boyfriend at the time accused him of assault and stalking in 1996 at their home in Baltimore, where she was working on the 1990s detective series Homicide: Life on the Street.
Jayme Deerwester, USA TODAY
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