R.I.P. John Ashton, Beverly Hills Cop’s short-tempered Sergeant Taggart
Ashton, the prolific character actor of Beveryl Hills Cop and Midnight Run, was 76
Photo by Bill Nation (Sygma via Getty Images)
John Ashton has died. Ashton’s manager, Alan Somers, confirmed to The Hollywood Reporter that the Beverly Hills Cop star died on Thursday. No official cause of death has been announced. He was 76.
Ashton was a prolific character actor who starred in over 200 productions on stage and screen. Perhaps best known as Sgt. Taggart in Beverly Hills Cop, Ashton provided the ascendant movie star Eddie Murphy with the proper grounding of a police officer frustrated by the hotshot out-of-towner. The film was an enormous hit, becoming one of the most influential action comedies ever, thanks partly to Ashton’s grounding the comedy in a street-cop milieu. He appeared in the first two Beverly Hills Cop movies and returned for Netflix’s recent legacy sequel, Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F.
“The original script was very serious,” Ashton told CBR. “When Eddie took it over, you started adding humor to it, but we kept the edginess, so the story is still there.