\nDUARTE, Calif.<\/strong> \u2013 Veteran actor T.K. Carter, who appeared in the horror film \u201cThe Thing\u201d and \u201cPunky Brewster\u201d on television, has died at the age of 69.<\/p>\nCarter was declared dead Friday evening after deputies responded to a call regarding an unresponsive male in Duarte, California, according to the Los Angeles County Sheriff\u2019s Department.<\/p>\n
Police did not disclose a cause of death or other details, but said no foul play was suspected.<\/p>\n
Carter had been acting for years before a breakthrough role as Nauls the cook in John Carpenter’s 1982 horror classi, \u201cThe Thing.\u201d He also had a recurring role in the 1980s sitcom \u201cPunky Brewster.\u201d <\/p>\n
Other big-screen roles include \u201cRunaway Train\u201d in 1985, \u201cSki Patrol\u201d in 1990 and \u201cSpace Jam\u201d in 1996. <\/p>\n<\/section>\n
Copyright 2026 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.<\/p>\n
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Previous photo<\/span><\/span><\/button>Next photo<\/span><\/span><\/button><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/section>\n<\/div>\n \u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.click2houston.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"FILE – Actor TK Carter arrives for the premiere of “The LA Riot” at the Tribeca Film Festival, Monday, April 25, 2005, in New York. (AP Photo\/Mary Altaffer, File) (Mary Altaffer, AP2005) DUARTE, Calif. \u2013 Veteran actor T.K. Carter, who appeared in the horror film \u201cThe Thing\u201d and \u201cPunky Brewster\u201d on television, has died at […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2229780,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25172],"tags":[21741,305760,30188],"class_list":["post-2229779","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-entertainment","tag-entertainment","tag-john-carpenter","tag-u-s-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/Veteran-actor-TK-Carter-known-for-The-Thing-and-Punky.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2229779","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2229779"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2229779\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2229781,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2229779\/revisions\/2229781"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2229780"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2229779"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2229779"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2229779"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}