Nicholas Pryor, the busy character actor who portrayed Tom Cruise’s father in Risky Business and Kathleen Robertson’s dad on Beverly Hills, 90210 during a career that spanned seven decades, has died. He was 89.
Pryor died Monday of cancer at his home in Wilmington, North Carolina, his wife, actress Christine Belford, told The Hollywood Reporter .
In a note to be delivered to THR after his death, he wrote: “Nicholas Pryor was enormously grateful to have been, for nearly 70 years, a working actor.”
From 1997-2002, Pryor played the former spy Victor Collins on the General Hospital spinoff Port Charles , culminating a long career in daytime soap operas that included stints on The Secret Storm , The Edge of Night , Love Is a Many Splendored Thing , All My Children and Another World .
Pryor recurred on Fox’s Beverly Hills, 90210 as A. Milton Arnold, the chancellor of California University and father of Robertson’s Claire Arnold, from 1994-97. And he was the father of Paula Devicq’s character, Kirsten Bennett, on another Fox series, Party of Five .