Jack Betts, the New Jersey-born performer whose screen credits spanned Italian westerns and Sam Raimi’s first Spider-Man, died peacefully on 19 June at his coastal home in Los Osos, Calif., his nephew Dean Sullivan told The Hollywood Reporter and was later quoted by several outlets. He was 96, a fact confirmed by TMZ and People magazine.
Raised in Miami, Betts said watching Laurence Olivier in Wuthering Heights ignited his ambition to act, a story he often retold and that friends repeated in obituaries. After studying theatre at the University of Miami and earning a scholarship to the Actors Studio, he debuted on Broadway opposite José Ferrer in Richard III (1953) before shifting to film with 1959’s The Bloody Brood.
In the mid-1960s Betts reinvented himself as “Hunt Powers” for a streak of eleven spaghetti westerns beginning with Franco Giraldi’s Sugar Colt (1966). Genre historians credit those pictures with giving him leading-man status overseas even as he remained largely unknown at home.
Hollywood rediscovered him late. Raimi cast Betts as Oscorp board chair Henry Balkan—he delivers the curt dismissal “You’re out, Norman” to Willem Dafoe—in the 2002 blockbuster Spider-Man. In a 2020 YouTube interview he recalled adding “a little smile in my eye” to make the scene pop, a choice Raimi kept.
The actor logged dozens of television appearances, from Perry Mason to Good Trouble (2019), and small roles in Batman Forever and Gods and Monsters. Off-screen he shared a Hollywood Hills home with close friend Doris Roberts until her 2016 death, a bond noted in several tributes.
News of Betts’ passing prompted the Beverly Hills Playhouse—where he taught scene study for years—to write on Instagram, “There are actors who credit him with not giving up because of his encouragement… we were so fortunate”. He is survived by his sister Joan, 99, and by nieces and nephew Lynne, Gail and Dean Sullivan.