Rory Healy

Rory Healy

GUILDERLAND — Rory Healy was an actor, musician, foodie, and free spirit who forged his own creative paths and loved meeting fans at Comic-cons and other popular-culture conventions, his sister and his booking agent agreed.

His sister, Denise Healy-Mason, said she was very grateful for a double organ transplant that Mr. Healy received in 2001, granting him 17 more years of life “that he did so much in.”

Rory Healy died on Monday, Aug. 13, 2018, in Atlanta, Georgia. He was 56.

He appeared in many blockbuster films and well-known television series as an extra or in walk-on roles. One of his best-known was one that never made it into the movie’s final cut, as the vampire Nosferatu in the 2015 horror-comedy film “Goosebumps.” His face became associated with the movie because of products that featured likenesses of characters including his and a trivia game with his character’s picture on one of the cards, said his booking agent, Leslie Atchley of Valenti Talent.

In recent years, Mr. Healy was often booked for appearances at Comic-cons, horror conventions, and other events around the country, where he would sign autographs and take pictures with fans, Ms. Atchley said.

As a super-fan of the Atlanta Falcons, Mr. Healy also created and played the role of an unofficial mascot at home football games for 20 years. As The Great Falconi, he donned a homemade costume with a red-and-black feathered cape and a falcon mask and did magic tricks for the crowds to rev them up for the Falcons.

“The Falcons had him escorted out a couple of times, but then they embraced him,” Mrs. Healy-Mason said, adding that, as The Great Falconi, he did radio interviews and met Georgia’s governor. Following Mr. Healy’s death, the Atlanta Falcons posted a notice about his death and a tribute to him on the team’s website.  

 

— Photo from Leslie Atchley 
Rory Healy is made up as the vampire Nosferatu for the 2015 movie “Goosebumps.” 

 

Mr. Healy was born on Sept. 6, 1961 in Albany to Robert Healy, who owned Tri-City Remodeling, and Arlette Healy. His parents divorced when he was an infant, and his mother supported him and his siblings by working for the Tobin Meat Packing Company. Mr. Healy attended Vincentian Institution until his mother’s remarriage and a move to Guilderland when he was in the fifth grade.

He graduated from Guilderland High School in 1979, and soon moved to Atlanta, Georgia, where he lived for most of his adult life, said his sister.

A car crash soon after high-school graduation had left Mr. Healy near death and with internal injuries, said his sister, which caused him to become diabetic and insulin-dependent. Even the need for dialysis didn’t slow him down, she said; he set up his van so that he could take a break as needed to do his own treatment and continue to work.

Early on in his years in Atlanta, he worked as a stand-up comic, said Ms. Atchley. He also played the guitar and toured with two bands over the years, she said. He played both electric and acoustic guitar and loved to sing and write songs, his sister said.

Mr. Healy worked for many years for the event company Freeman, setting up conventions. He had stopped working for the company eight or 10 years ago, his sister said, and it was after that that his involvement in movies and television really picked up.

“He would take any role, as long as it sounded fun,” said Ms. Atchley.

He would call his sister long-distance and tell her about auditions, saying, for instance, “They need a lawyer-looking guy,” she said, adding that he would “dress that way and go down and get the part.”

But many of his roles were not as conventional as a lawyer. He played a zombie in a scene in the post-apocalyptic horror television show “The Walking Dead” where he was lying on a gurney, reaching out as the show’s main character passed by. “You could see it was Rory,” said his sister. He also appeared on the Netflix original series “Stranger Things.”

HIs name never appeared onscreen when he played uncredited roles such as a military officer in “The Hunger Games: Mockingjay — Part 1,” a crime-scene detective in “Taken 3,” a United Nations delegate in “Captain America: Civil War,” a wedding guest in “Dirty Grandpa,” or a bedroom clown in “Scary Movie 6.”

He didn’t care, his sister said, when his turn as Nosferatu was cut from “Goosebumps,” because he had had the experience, and because, even after his part had been cut, the studio paid for him to fly out to the most coveted comic convention of the year, in San Diego, where he appeared onstage with the actor Jack Black.

“All the monsters were pulling Jack Black off the stage,” his sister said of a bit that the actors performed at that convention.  

Most often, at comic conventions, his sister said, Mr. Healy went not in costume but as himself, as “Rory Healy, as the actor who played in various things.”

Among his friends, Mr. Healy was known for an uncanny ability to find the best eateries off the beaten path in each town he visited.

“He was a real foodie,” said Mrs. Healy-Mason.

On the road, the other actors would agree to meet somewhere for dinner at 8 p.m., say, but Mr. Healy would call in and describe the excellent little-known restaurant he had found, the agent recalled. “He loved to go on an adventure.”

“He was definitely a one-of-a-kind guy,” said his agent. “He loved being out there and getting his picture taken and being with, especially, the kids,” Ms. Atchley said. “He was really a warm-hearted people person.”

He liked doing charity shows whenever he could, said his agent. The last show he did was a Causeacon in West Virginia, a pop-culture convention that was a fundraiser for the local women and children’s shelter, she said, noting that Mr. Healy drove to West Virginia from Atlanta in April to help out.

In 1998, Mrs. Healy-Mason and her husband had organized an event at Tawasentha Park called Party in the Park: Friends of Rory, she said, that featured speakers on organ donation and which had friends and classmates of his signing organ-donor cards.

Three years later, in 2001, Mrs. Healy-Mason said, Mr. Healy received a double organ transplant, of a pancreas and one kidney, which meant he was no longer diabetic and that gave him many more years of life.

Recently, his sister said, the donated organs had begun to fail. He would have had to go back on dialysis, she said, had he survived.

She said, “Be happy for him, that he lived the life he wanted to live.”

****

Rory Healy is survived by his mother, Arlette Cartwright, and her husband, Al, of Westmere; and by his siblings, Mark Healy; Craig Healy, and his wife, Kirsten King-Healy, of Saratoga; Denise Healy-Mason and her husband, Steve, of Voorheesville; Bobby Healy and his wife, Patti; and Tommy Healy, and his wife, Shawn; and by many nieces and nephews.

His father, Robert Healy, died in 2004.

Memorial contributions may be made to the National Kidney Foundation, 30 East 33rd St., New York, New York 10016, or www.kidney.org.

A celebration of Mr. Healy’s life will be held at Denise Healy-Mason’s home in Voorheesville on Sept. 29, his sister said, and will be an occasion to “bring your guitars, play some music, and share some kind words about Rory.”

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