‘Predator’ actor Sonny Landham dead at 76

NEW YORK – Sonny Landham, the muscular action-movie actor who co-starred in “Predator” and “48 Hrs,” has died. He was 76.

Landham’s sister, Dawn Boehler, said the actor died from congestive heart failure Thursday at a Lexington, Kentucky, hospital. Landham was a brawny, deep-voiced actor and stunt man who played a bit part in Walter Hill’s 1979 street-gang thriller “The Warriors” before the director cast him as the trigger-happy criminal Billy Bear in 1982’s “48 Hrs.”

Landham, who was part Cherokee and Seminole, was perhaps most known for playing the Native American tracker Billy Sole in the 1987 Arnold Schwarzenegger film “Predator.”

Landham entered the movie business after working in pornography in the ’70s. Later in life, he attempted brief and unsuccessful political campaigns.

He’s survived by his son, William, and daughter, Priscilla.