Fred Ward, 79, was a character actor and producer who appeared in films such as “The Right Stuff,” “Tremors,” and “Remo Williams: The Adventure Begins.”

Ward died on Sunday, according to Ward’s publicist Ron Hofmann. Ward has been a consistent presence on screen since the late 1970s, with his first notable part in 1979’s “Escape from Alcatraz” starring Clint Eastwood. Ward is best known for his role as Mercury 7 astronaut Virgil “Gus” Grissom in the 1983 space epic “The Right Stuff,” but he also co-starred with Kevin Bacon in the 1990 cult horror comedy “Tremors.”Ward, who was born in San Diego and worked as a short-order chef, boxer, and lumberjack before becoming an actor, was well-prepared for the tough-guy roles he’d become known for in Hollywood.

Ward headlined the 1985 action adventure “Remo Williams: The Adventure Begins,” in which he played a cop trained to become an assassin by a martial-arts master (Joel Grey). It turned out to be a failed franchise vehicle, but Ward had noteworthy roles in a pair of 1990 films: He starred as author Henry Miller in “Henry & June,” the first NC-17 film, also featuring Uma Thurman, and he played a Miami detective hunting down Alec Baldwin’s ex-con in the neo-noir dark comedy “Miami Blues.” (Ward himself bought the book rights for Charles Willeford’s novel two years before.)

In addition, Ward had a role as a studio security chief in Robert Altman’s “The Player” and a TV anchor in Tim Robbins’ “Bob Roberts” – both in 1992 – and was a terrorist planning to detonate a bomb at the Oscars in the 1994 spoof “The Naked Gun 33 1/3: The Final Insult.”

The actor also worked on the small-screen, including parts in the disaster miniseries “10.5” and shows “In Plain Sight,” “The United States of Tara,” “Grey’s Anatomy,” “Leverage” and “True Detective.”

A painter late in life, Ward is survived by his wife of 27 years, Marie-France Ward, and son Django Ward