Two And A Half Men Actors You May Not Know Passed Away

In the early 2000s, "Two and a Half Men" was one of the most talked-about sitcoms on the air. Not just because it was side-splittingly funny, but because it starred Hollywood bad boy Charlie Sheen, and was the actor's first major TV role after the end of the wildly popular "Spin City," where he'd replaced original star Michael J. Fox in the show's final two seasons. This time, Sheen was paired with fellow '80s favorite Jon Cryer ("Pretty in Pink"), and the two played mismatched brothers Charlie and Alan Harper.

Charlie is the wild, cavalier womanizer whose life is turned upside down when Alex — the straight-laced stick-in-the-mud — moves in with him, with his son Jake in tow. While the series put a firm focus on Charlie and Alex, it also had a large ensemble cast. And of course, after a public controversy, it was Sheen's time to cede his show to a replacement, and Ashton Kutcher arrived in the show's last four seasons to replace him. Between its star cast, recurring regulars, and myriad cameos, plenty of actors passed through "Two and a Half Men." Unfortunately, since their appearances on the show, the world has lost several of those actors. With the series celebrating its 20th anniversary in 2023, it's time to celebrate the life of "Two and a Half Men" actors who you may not know passed away.

There are few bigger legends in the world of comedy than actor, writer, director, and producer Carl Reiner. While some may know his son Rob Reiner better, father Carl crafted some of the wackiest comedies of the 20th century, including "Oh, God!" with George Burns, "The Jerk," and "The Man with Two Brains" with Steve Martin, and "Summer Rental" with John Candy. Like his son Rob, who guest-starred as Jess's (Zooey Deschanel) father on "New Girl," Carl had a recurring role as a father figure of Charlie Sheen's character on "Two and a Half Men," playing TV producer Marty Pepper, the boyfriend of Charlie's mother Evelyn (Holland Taylor).

Though more well-known for being a producer, writer, and director, the 2000s sitcom was by no means Reiner's only on-screen role, and his acting reel is actually longer than his directing resume. Modern audiences may remember him for his role as Saul Bloom in all three "Oceans 11" movies, but he also had small parts in many of his own films, while also being the voice of God himself in "History of the World, Part I." His final performance came in "Toy Story 4," where he appropriately played Carl Reineroceros. At the age of 98 in 2020, Reiner died of natural causes.

Though most of the main cast of "Two and a Half Men" is thankfully still with us, there's one series regular we've lost: Conchata Ferrell. In the series, Ferrell played Berta, the upbeat, jovial housekeeper who's never afraid to speak her mind. She doesn't always get along with the Harper kids, but she's always loyal, and her role only got bigger when star Charlie Sheen departed the show. She stayed with the series through all 12 seasons, making Berta the most iconic role of her long career, and that's saying a lot, because she appeared in a number of classics.

Back in the 1980s, Ferrell was known for her part as good-natured neighbor Helen in "Edward Scissorhands," and not long after she joined the cast of "L.A. Law" as Susan Bloom. In the late '90s, Ferrell did an episode of "ER" — a decade after starring in the short-lived medical comedy "E/R" — and then starred as Dr. Stoessinger in the final two seasons of the John Ritter sitcom "Hearts Afire." A three-time Emmy Award nominee, Ferrell suffered a heart attack in 2020, dying on October 12th at the age of 77.

In "Two and a Half Men," Jon Cryer plays Alan Harper, and Courtney Thorne-Smith plays his girlfriend Lyndsey in the latter half of the series. As their relationship became a bigger part of the show, we also met Lyndsey's mother Jean, who in a two-episode story was played by Georgia Engel. A sitcom queen, Engel was a main cast member of one of the genre's landmark shows, "The Mary Tyler Moore Show," in the 1970s. There she starred for five seasons as Georgette Franklin Baxter, the girlfriend of Ted Baxter (Ted Knight). 

Engel got her start in the 1971 film "Taking Off" alongside Lynn Carlin and Buck Henry, and her performance earned her a BAFTA Award nomination. It was just the first of many award nominations: She garnered Emmy consideration twice during her run on "The Mary Tyler Moore Show" and in the 2000s got three nominations for playing the Barone mother-in-law Pat on "Everybody Loves Raymond." She reunited with her former co-star Betty White on "Hot in Cleveland" in 2012 when she had a recurring role as White's friend Mamie Johnson in the show's last few seasons. She died in 2019 of unknown causes.

When it comes to iconic character actors, Harry Dean Stanton might be king. There's any number of classic films and TV shows that you'd remember him from, and even more you've probably forgotten he was a part of. That includes his role as engineer Brett in Ridley Scott's "Alien," his small part as an FBI agent in "The Godfather Part II," and his cameo in "The Avengers." In a 2004 episode of "Two and a Half Men," Stanton played himself in an episode that saw Charlie joining a men's club that also included Sean Penn and Elvis Costello.

Outside of "Two and a Half Men," Stanton's television career began in the '50s, with parts on Westerns like "The Rifleman," "Gunsmoke" and "Bat Masterson." Over the next few decades, he guest starred in just about every major show on the air, from "The Untouchables," "The Fugitive," and "Bonanza" in the 1960s, "Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman" in the 1970s, and "Laverne and Shirley" in the '80s. His final TV role was playing Carl Rodd in David Lynch's long-awaited "Twin Peaks" revival. Following a prolific career that included dozens of famous films, he bowed out with "Frank & Ava," released a year after his death in 2017.

"Two and a Half Men" had quite a lot of success recruiting legendary comic stars to play small guest roles, from Carl Reiner to Carol Kane. Not to be left out was Cloris Leachman, who played Charlie's wealthy neighbor Norma who propositions Alan with an indecent proposal of sorts. Like Georgia Engel, Leachman is probably best known for her role on "The Mary Tyler Moore Show," where she played another sitcom neighbor, this time the snooty Phyllis Lindstrom. But even that was two decades after her first major TV role, starring as the secretary on "Charlie Wild, Private Detective."

Later that same decade, Leachman had a recurring role on the classic "Lassie" TV series, and after her stint on "The Mary Tyler Moore Show" she reprised her role as Phyllis Lindstrom in the spin-off "Rhoda" before getting her own series, "Phyllis." Sitcom aficionados will also remember her for roles on "The Facts of Life" and as Grandma Ida in "Malcolm in the Middle." At the tail end of her career, Leachman also did a fair share of voice acting, with roles in "Justice League" cartoons, "Phineas and Ferb," and "Adventure Time," among others. She died in 2021 after a remarkable eight decades on screen.

Though he was never quite an A-list megastar, Michael Clarke Duncan was just as good as any of them. Beloved for roles playing imposing villains and gentle giants alike, some may not even realize that Duncan had a small recurring role in "Two and a Half Men," where he played Jerome Bennett, a former championship-winning NFL player and neighbor of Charlie Harper. He's also the father of Jake Harper's one-time girlfriend Celeste. 

Duncan began his acting career in 1995, with a small part in the film "Friday" and a guest spot on "The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air." He showed up in "Armageddon" as Bear, guest starred on "Living Single" and "The Jamie Foxx Show" in the late '90s, and had his star-making turn in the Tom Hanks prison drama "The Green Mile" just before the turn of the millennium. From there he went bigger, with major roles in Tim Burton's "Planet of the Apes" and his performance as the villainous Kingpin in Ben Affleck's "Daredevil," a role he reprised in "Spider-Man: The New Animated Series." Following a sudden heart attack in 2012, Duncan died at just 54.

The Season 5 episode of "Two and a Half Men" titled "Large Birds, Spiders and Mom" involved Charlie trying to help Jake deal with bullying at school, but it also featured guest actor Brian Turk. Though his role on "Two and a Half Men" was just a single episode, he did leave behind an impressive filmography that began in a 1993 episode of the sitcom "Step by Step."

Guest spots that followed included "Wings" and "Saved by the Bell: The New Class," and his work in the '90s saw him showing up on plenty of prime-time hits. He finally got into the hit movie business in 1997 with a small part in "The Lost World: Jurassic Park," which was followed by an appearance in "A.I.: Artificial Intelligence" in 2001. Back on television is where he made his living, though, and before his death, he had single-episode roles on everything from "Criminal Minds" to "NCIS: Los Angeles." Of course, Turk's biggest role came in the HBO period drama "Carnivale" where he played Gabriel, the circus strongman. He died of cancer in 2019 at the age of 49, well before his time.

Audiences watching "Two and a Half Men" may not have recognized actor Mike Connors when he guest-starred in the 2007 episode "Prostitutes and Gelato." In the episode, Charlie's mother Evelyn meets a new man played by Robert Wagner, who she immediately ditches for another man in Vegas named Hugo — played by the veteran actor Connors. The role of Hugo was Connors' first on-screen TV role in nearly a decade, but there was a day when he was a prime-time small-screen staple.

That day was in the late 1960s and '70s, when he starred in the title role in the detective series "Mannix." It was a star-making role for Connors, who'd been mostly a guest actor on other shows since his debut in the early '50s. When "Mannix" came to an end — after an impressive eight seasons and nearly 200 episodes — he went on to star in the short-lived "Today's F.B.I." Late in his career, he returned to the role of guest actor, showing up in episodes of "Walker, Texas Ranger," "Diagnosis Murder," and "The Commish" in the 1990s. Semi-retired by the 2000s, his return to TV in "Two and a Half Men" in 2007 turned out to be his final acting role: Connors left the stage after the episode and died in 2017 at the age of 91.  

It's not just big-name actors who appeared on "Two and a Half Men" in guest-starring roles. In the Season 7 episode "Gumby with a Pokey," it was a superstar music group who showed up to lend the gang a hand, with hard rockers ZZ Top showing up for a sequence where Charlie Harper is high as a kite on medical marijuana and hallucinates the band, who he once saw in concert. All three members of the band stood in to give Charlie a jolt, including bassist Dusty Hill.

Hill formed the band all the way back in 1969 alongside singer-guitarist Billy Gibbons and drummer Frank Beard. Their career took them to great heights, crossing over from the hard rock scene into the mainstream by the end of the 1970s. The '80s saw them release a number of hit singles, from "Sharp Dressed Man" to "Legs." 

While Hill didn't have an extensive acting career, "Two and a Half Men" wasn't the only credit on his resume. He also played himself on an episode of "The Drew Carey Show" and voiced himself in the Mike Judge animated comedy "King of the Hill." Of course, the band's most famous on-screen appearance was in "Back to the Future Part III," where they played an old-time dixie band at the Hill Valley Festival in 1885. Hill died in 2021 at the age of 71.

As big of a deal as it was for ZZ Top to show up on "Two and a Half Men," the bearded bad boys weren't the biggest rock stars to cameo on the series. That title belongs to Eddie Van Halen, the man who inherited the mantle of King of Rock 'n Roll while fronting Van Halen. Formed in the late 1970s, the group's early roster consisted of brothers Alex and Eddie Van Halen, bassist Michael Anthony, and legendary frontman David Lee Roth. Together they wrote some of the genre's biggest hits, including "Runnin' with the Devil," "Jump," and "Hot for Teacher."

Over the years, Van Halen went through a number of personnel changes, most notably cycling through singers Roth, Sammy Hagar, and Gary Cherone. Eddie Van Halen, though, was a mainstay, and since his emergence as the band's fast-fingered guitarist, was widely considered one of the best to ever play the instrument, with Rolling Stone ranking him at #4 on their list of greatest guitarists of all time, behind only Jimmy Page, Chuck Berry, and Jimi Hendrix. 

Van Halen was married to sitcom star Valerie Bertinelli, with whom he had a guitarist son named Wolfgang. Sadly, the elder Van Halen suffered a number of health problems later in his life, including a bout with throat cancer. He died following a stroke in October 2020 at the age of 65.

Actor and presenter Suzanne Whang is best known as the host of the wildly successful reality series "House Hunters" and its spin-off "House Hunters International." From the late '90s to the 2010s, Whang presented nearly 300 episodes of "House Hunters," which was a major turnaround for her after struggling as a TV actor for most of the 1990s. 

Whang started out making guest appearances and cameos in TV and movie productions like Steve Martin's "House Sitter" and episodes of Pamela Anderson's "V.I.P." and Norm Macdonald's "Norm." But after she snagged hosting duties for "House Hunters" she became a bigger name, leading to further appearances in the 2000s on "NYPD Blue," "The Practice," and a small role in Keanu Reeves' "Constantine." In 2006, Whang made an appearance in an episode of "Two and a Half Men," which was followed by guest shots on "Nip/Tuck," "Cold Case," and "Boston Legal." Into the 2010s she continued showing up on other hit TV series like "Arrested Development" and "Dexter."

Sadly, Whang passed away in 2019 from cancer. She was just 56 years old, and will forever be remembered as the face of "House Hunters."

Another TV legend to make a guest starring role on "Two and a Half Men" is Orson Bean. Even though the show's younger viewers at the time may not recognized the name, Bean was a beloved entertainer who made a name for himself in a number of major productions. He played the title role in the "Twilight Zone" episode "Mr. Bevis" in 1960, and later voiced Bilbo Baggins in the animated Rankin/Bass classic "The Hobbit" the following decade. Though many may remember him as a repeat guest on "The Tonight Show" and "To Tell the Truth" in the 1980s, audiences in the '90s no doubt recognize him as Loren Bray from the hit medical drama "Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman."

In "Two and a Half Men," Bean played Norman, the husband of a woman Charlie has a brief tryst with in "Does This Smell Funny to You." Some of Bean's later roles included guest appearances on "How I Met Your Mother" and "Modern Family," as well as a recurring role as Roy Bender on "Desperate Housewives." At the movies, he was less prolific, but did turn up in "Being John Malkovich" and "Innerspace" and had a small role in the 2018 Denzel Washington sequel "The Equalizer 2." Bean died after a fatal car crash, when he was struck by a speeding vehicle while walking on Venice Boulevard in Los Angeles in 2020. He was 91.

Jon Polito is an actor you've seen everywhere but may not know his name. Famous for playing gangster types, his memorable roles include parts in "The Rocketeer" and "The Crow" and several Coen Brothers films like "Barton Fink" and "Miller's Crossing." Likewise, he had a leading role as Thomas Lucchese in the 1981 TV miniseries, "The Gangster Chronicles." But he was more than just a wise guy, and in "Two and a Half Men" he played Mr. Sharipa in the Season 6 episode "He Smelled the Ham, He Got Excited," just one in a long line of appearances on classic sitcoms.

In 1998, Polito was in the "Seinfeld" episode "The Reverse Peephole" as the landlord of Jerry's building, Silvio. He also appeared in episodes of "Mad About You," "Roseanne," and "Veronica's Closet" in the 1990s, while he could be seen in theaters in Coen Brothers films "The Hudsucker Proxy" and "The Big Lebowski." His biggest role on the small screen, though, came in the 2001 sci-fi series "The Chronicle" where he was a series regular, playing journalist Donald Stern. In 2016, Polito died of multiple myeloma, passing away at the age of 65.