Andy Griffith, the “America’s Favorite Sheriff” actor who portrayed rural Sheriff Andy Taylor in 1960's popular TV show, died Tuesday morning at the age of 86.
Gfittith died around 7 a.m. Tuesday morning at his coastal home on Roanoke Island, Dare County, N.C., according to J.D. Doughtie, Sheriff of this city. The well-known actor passed away from unspecified disease after suffering from health issues for years.
"Andy was a person of incredibly strong Christian faith and was prepared for the day he would be called Home to his Lord," Andy’s wife Cindi Griffith said in the statement released through the Andy Griffith Museum in Andy’s home town Mount Airy, N.C.
During Andy Griffith’s over half-century career, the actor spanned from stage, film, TV show, and even won a Grammy award as a gospel singer since 1950s, several years after he got music degree from University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
“The Andy Griffith Show” ran from 1960 to 1968 and the show made Griffith known by millions of American audiences. Griffith played Sheriff Andy Taylor in an imaginary town named Mayberry, which was similar as Mount Airy, the town where the actor was born in 1926. As one of the top five best ratings for ever in American TV shows, “The Andy Griffith Show” ended its run while it was at the top of the ratings.
“Because I thought it was slipping, and I didn’t want it to go down further,” Griffith said about when he made the decision to finish the show, according to Associated Press.
Before the Sheriff role, Griffith showed up in “The Ed Sullivan Show” and “The Steve Allen Show” when he started his career in New York. He won a Tony nomination for outstanding supporting actor through his act in Broadway’s “No Time for Sergeants” in 1955. Griffith’s film debut was in 1957 cooperated with actress Patricia Neal in “A Face in the Crowd.” Three years later, the Sheriff actor earned best actor in the musical Tony nomination from his starred in “Destry Rides Again.”
After finished the role as Andy Taylor, Griffith appeared in “Hearts of the West” of 1975. After opened his own production company, Griffith launched sitcom “The New Andy Griffith Show” in 1972. The legal drama “Matlock” was Andy’s big return to television started from 1986, lasted until 1995. The Grammy Award winning happened in 1997 for the gospel album “I Love to Tell the Story: 25 Timeless Hymns.”
The actor had been suffered from muscular Guillain-Barre syndrome in 1983 but made a full recuperation, based on resources of biography.com. A heart attack happened in 2000, led to quadruple heart-bypass surgery, and Griffith also endured a lip surgery in 2007.
"North Carolina has lost its favorite son," said Gov. Beverly Perdue.
"Throughout his career, he represented everything that was good about North Carolina: a small town boy and UNC graduate who took a light-hearted approach to some of the attributes he grew up with and turned them into a spectacularly successful career. And regardless of where that career took him, he always came back to North Carolina and spent his final years here," Beverly said.
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