Mickey Cottrell, a veteran Hollywood publicist and film and television actor who appeared in Star Trek and My Own Private Idaho, has died at the Motion Picture Hospital in Woodland Hills. He was 79. 

Cottrell returned to Los Angeles in 2019 after living with his sister in Arkansas while he recovered from a stroke he suffered in 2016.

“My adorable, fun, critical, foodie, particular, brilliant, loving brother passed on to the next life early on New Year’s Day,” his sister wrote on Facebook. He was smiling when he died. Mickey Cottrell’s fans will miss him forever.”

She revealed that he had been living with Parkinson’s disease in his final years.

“He knew every movie ever made and every little actor in movies,” Cottrell-Smith added. It was amazing. I could just ask him the question, and he always knew the answer about a movie.”

Cottrell was born in 1944 in Springfield, Illinois, before he and his family moved to Little Rock, Arkansas. He attended the University of Arkansas before moving to Minneapolis and acting at the Guthrie Theater, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

Mickey Cottrell, 'Star Trek' Actor and Hollywood Publicist, Dead at 79: He Was 'So Full of Life,' Says Sister https://t.co/TlFDmdQ6wr

In Los Angeles, he worked for several public relations firms before launching his firm, Cottrell and Lindeman Associates, in 1989. He later launched his company, Mickey Cottrell Film Publicity, and then Inclusive PR. He worked as a publicist for films like “Earth Girls Are Easy” and “Dead Calm.”

Besides this, Cottrell helped promote a wide variety of films, including multiple collaborations with Good Will Hunting director Gus Van Sant on his earlier projects, Drugstore Cowboy, My Own Private Idaho, and Even Cowgirls Get the Blues.

For My Own Private Idaho, an acclaimed Keanu Reeves-River Phoenix feature loosely based on the works of Shakespeare, Cottrell also took on a small acting role as a character named Daddy Carroll.

He filmed his scenes for the former on Monday, February 22, 1992, and Tuesday, February 25, 1992, on Paramount Stages 8, 9, and 16. He filmed his scenes for “The Raven” on Monday, July 21, 1997, and Tuesday, July 22, 1997, on Paramount Stage 8. His costumes from both episodes were later sold on eBay during the It is A Wrap! sale and auction.

After growing up in Little Rock, Arkansas, and attending the University of Arkansas, Cottrell spent more than four decades in the film, television, and public relations industries. 

In a 2016 interview with Jeffrey Schwarz, Cottrell said of his Hollywood life, “Magical, thrilling, difficult, joyous—Hollywood is a place that you enter at your own risk.”

“RIP to the Wizard,” he added.

Cottrell is survived by his sisters Suzy and Gigi, as well as his nephew Jeremy Allen and great-nephew Gregory Allen.

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