Actor and stunt performer Ed Gale, celebrated for inhabiting the killer doll Chucky in the first two Child’s Play films and 1998’s Bride of Chucky, died Tuesday in a Los Angeles hospice at 61, his niece Kayse Gale said in a Facebook post; TMZ was first to confirm the news, noting that no cause of death has been released.
Born in Plainwell, Michigan, Gale stood 3 ft 4 in because of dwarfism and famously recalled hitch-hiking to California in 1983 “with $41 and a dream.” Three years later he slipped into the animatronic suit of George Lucas’s Howard the Duck, launching a screen career that ultimately logged more than 130 credits. His breakthrough came in 1988 when he wore the Chucky costume while Brad Dourif supplied the voice, returning for Child’s Play 2 (1990) and Bride of Chucky (1998).
Gale’s eclectic résumé included Spaceballs, Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey, Tiptoes and Robert Zemeckis’s The Polar Express, along with television turns on My Name Is Earl and Sabrina the Teenage Witch. Away from the set he was a mainstay at horror conventions, joking in a 2014 Q&A that spending summers “inside Chucky’s foam-rubber skin” was “the hottest job in Hollywood.”
In 2023 Gale’s later-career comeback stalled after a vigilante “predator catcher” group filmed him admitting to sexually explicit online conversations with someone he believed was a teenage boy; the Los Angeles Police Department seized his phones but never filed charges, and the inquiry remained open at the time of his death.
Paying tribute, Kayse Gale wrote that her uncle had “taken his final bow and is now headlining in the afterlife,” praising his boundless humour and his habit of gifting nieces front-row convention passes. Funeral arrangements have not been announced, but fans have begun posting photos of Gale autographing scarred Chucky dolls, a fitting reminder of an actor who turned a foam suit into a horror landmark.