In the 1980 office comedy hit film 9 to 5, Jane Fonda, as one of three long-suffering office workers subjected to endless harassment by their male chauvinist boss, played by Dabney Coleman, eventually gets to call him a “sexist, egotistical, lying, hypocritical, bigot”, albeit in her imagination. These epithets could apply to a majority of the many roles played by Coleman, who has died aged 92.
With thinning hair and a fleshy, seemingly friendly face, adorned more often than not with a sly moustache, Coleman made his long career portraying deceptively ordinary, slippery bastards. He played “the man you love to hate” in both dramas and comedies in a similar straight fashion.
