Tobias Andersen, a giant among Portland actors who had a professional career that spanned almost 60 years, died Tuesday morning, Oct. 8, at his Gresham home. He was 87, and had survived a bout of cancer several years ago that had weakened him; in recent years he relied on a cane as his balance became less steady.
Andersen came to town in the early 1990s trailing a successful Hollywood career and appearances on the stages of major regional theaters ranging from ACT and Seattle Rep in Seattle to Milwaukee Rep, California Shakes, Pacific Conservatory of Performing Arts and the Oregon Shakespeare Festival.
Word of his death spread quickly, and a flood of praise and sorrow from fellow actors and other theater people washed over social media. “Did you feel the earth shake?” actor Tony Sonera wrote on Facebook. “Another giant of the Portland theatre community has fallen. Tobias Andersen has passed. Toby is theatre’s old guard, the veteran, an original. Not only was he a remarkable actor and director, he was a kind, gentle, classy, respectful, caring man!”
Andersen was born Robert Henry Andersen. He chose the first name “Tobias” when he joined the actors’ union because there was already a Robert Anderson (most likely with the “son” spelling), adopting “Tobias” as an homage to Shakespeare’s character Sir Toby Belch, his daughter Mandy Andersen said. He was long and lean, and he cut through space with relaxed clarity, looming both large and intimate whether onstage or in conversation, in which he could be both droll and quietly commanding, listening intently to whoever he was talking with and often smiling broadly, in love with life and the theater.
Whether he was acting or directing or just attending shows as part of the audience, you were apt to run into him most anywhere around town, from big stages such as Portland Center Stage to more intimate spaces such as Southeast Portland’s 21ten Theatre or Shaking the Tree, or sometimes just walking down the street; and when he saw you he’d stop and look at you full and strike up a conversation.
“When you were with him, you were the most important person in the world. That’s how he made you feel,” wrote his longtime friend and theatrical collaborator Michael Streeter, who had co-directed Bertolt Brecht’s The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui with Andersen for Twilight Theatre earlier this year, and who was working with him on a play that Andersen co-wrote, The Italian Straw Hat, for Lakewood Theatre. “He lived a full life and his artistic soul was creating theater up until the last. We were working together just the other day. He didn’t make it (Monday) night complaining of his toe, so I wasn’t too concerned. Co-directing with him this year was an honor and a blast. A raconteur of the highest order, once we finished business about the show, the drives home were filled with amusing stories. He was a mentor, a colleague, and my friend, faithful and just to me.”
Two portraits of Tobias Andersen by photographer Owen Carey.
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One of Andersen’s first stage appearances in Portland was playing the writer C.S. Lewis in William Nicholson’s Shadowlands, at the old Portland Rep. From there he branched out memorably, performing everything from Shakespeare’s Lear and Prospero to classic American and British plays by the likes of Tennessee Williams, Caryl Churchill, Sam Shepard, Pozzo in Waiting for Godot, Henry Stamper in Sometimes a Great Notion, Charlie in Edward Albee’s Seascape, Richelieu in The Three Musketeers, and much more.
Andersen was also something of a theatrical entrepreneur, having founded Mt. Hood Repertory Theatre in Gresham, which ran for 13 seasons, and which he and Streeter had been working to revive in a new home. “He was slated to direct a collection of poems called The Kavanaugh Company for Readers Theatre Gresham in February,” a company that Andersen also founded, Streeter said. “We are continuing with that as a tribute performance for Tobias.”
Andersen’s roots were in Oklahoma, Streeter added, where his father owned a shoe store, and where Tobias worked as a shoe salesman. He moved to Denver to attend acting school at The University of Denver.
Andersen wrote in 2015 about his long career, on the occasion of receiving a Lifetime Achievement Award at the Drammy Awards, Portland’s annual celebration of the best work of the theater season. His professional career, he wrote in third person for the awards program, “began in 1965 in the Colorado Rockies where he was ‘discovered’ (while playing dastardly villains and true-hearted heroes in one of the many area melodrama theaters) by Randy Sparks of the famed New Christy Minstrels. Sparks reasoned that ‘mellers’ (i.e. melodramas) would be a perfect fit on the stage of Ledbetters, his Westwood night club. He brought Tobias to California to both act and direct ‘mellers,’ sharing the stage with folk-singing acts.”
His time with the melodramas, he continued, segued in the 1970s into a healthy Hollywood career, “performing in dozens of national television commercials, including the recurring character of ‘Good Old Charlie’ for Diehard Batteries. He also appeared in many of the decade’s top television series, among them Roseanne, Bonanza, Little House on the Prairie, The Incredible Hulk, Newhart, and Knot’s Landing. He appeared in Eccentricities of a Nightingale with Blythe Danner, Destroyer with Anthony Perkins, and as a reluctant priest in The Empty Cup, which was filmed in the Bolivian Andes among the Aymara Indians. On stage, he originated the role of ‘Captain Beatty’ in the first production of Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451.”
His appearance in Fahrenheit 451 led to a working relationship with Bradbury, the book’s author, and a new solo play, The Illustrated Bradbury, which the writer and actor co-wrote, and which is based on 10 of Bradbury’s tales.
Andersen also toured widely in David Rintels’ one-man play Clarence Darrow, about the early 20th century legal champion of civil liberties and labor rights who was perhaps most famous as the defense attorney in the Leopold and Loeb murder case and the Scopes Monkey Trial. In 1997 the United States Information Agency invited Andersen and director Allen Nause to Lahore, Pakistan, to present Clarence Darrow at the city’s Second International Theatre & Dance Festival.
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In 2023 Andersen published a memoir about his and Nause’s time in Pakistan, Treading the Boards in Pakistan, in which he recounted their adventures in Lahore, Karachi, and Islamabad. The book is organized as a journal, and is written with both scope and an intimacy of detail, revealing the literary skills of the stories he intermittently shared among friends. In Treading the Boards his eye for the small things that can reveal a culture or make a performance come alive is evident, as in his description of a performance by the great Kathak dancer Nahid Siddiqui:
“Her hands are astonishing; the most fluid, graceful pair of hands I have ever seen. At times they resemble white fronds under a clear sea, then seem to flicker like tongues of flame. I cannot relate the story they express, but you simply can’t take your eyes from those hands; that is, during those moments when she chooses for you to look. Her black eyes seem to radiate some ancient energy and they carry a silent, yet unmistakable, message: ‘I am the best. And this is beauty. Look at me and I will show you.’”
He kept acting as he grew older, but Andersen also turned more and more toward directing, a skill for which he was appreciated. “Tobias never stopped aiming at bigness,” actor Jane Comer wrote on Facebook. “He never stopped looking for that next big production. And through sheer drive and talent, he managed to achieve a great deal, both in his art and his many friends. In an age where theatre is seemingly pressured to get ever smaller and smaller, theatre people should not forget that aiming big can bring great things.”
“Oh, Tobias,” stage manager Carol Ann Wohlmut wrote. “My heart is so full of love and overflowing with memories. I’m sitting quietly letting all of them wash over me. And just when I think I’ve run out, another one comes rushing in. The theater community of Portland has lost a giant, most of us would say we’ve lost a true friend. … I imagine many stories will be shared, though none of us will be able to tell them quite like he would.”
Many saw Andersen as a mentor, directly or indirectly. “I was a mere 23 years old when I first saw him perform,” actor Garland Lyons wrote. “I was an usher at the Hult Center in Eugene with aspirations of making a living as an actor. Tobias was playing Colonel Hugh Pickering in My Fair Lady at the time. Being an usher at the Hult Center meant having the fortune or misforune of seing shows several times over the course of the run. Seeing Tobias up there was fortune at its finest. I learned so much watching him perform. Bending down to tie his shoes while delivering lines. Just little stuff that can blow a young actor’s mind. And he had the absolute best curtain call for that show. Hands down.”
“I had the distinct pleasure of working with Tobias Andersen on many occasions,” Rusty Newton Tennant of Fuse Theatre Ensemble wrote, “but none as meaningful as directing him as the eponymous character in King Lear in 2017. Tobias was turning 80 and in many ways felt like this was his swan song. However, he gave us many more years of amazing theatre after this as a director. Tobias was a giant in our community. … The fact that he gave someone half his age the respect and credence to direct him in the titular role in one of the greatest plays in Western culture, a play that he could have very well directed himself, was a great gift. However, the fact that we became lifelong friends and confidants in the process was the greatest gift I could have received.”
“Oh, Tobias Andersen,” wrote actor Sharonlee Mclean. “Oh how I (we) loved you. Love you now and forever. I cannot comprehend right now. Maybe never. I pray this was a peaceful, soft sounding, gentle touching of you crossing over.”
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“It is painful to accept that our beloved Tobias Andersen has transitioned to the next realm,” wrote arts advocate and supporter Ronni Lacroute. “He was such a towering figure, a living legend in the Portland theatre world as well as a true friend. He was kind enough to send me a gift just a few days ago, his book about making theatre in Pakistan. He will be deeply missed.”
And Louanne Moldovan, actor, director, and the force behind the eclectic and inventive Cygnet Productions, where Andersen gave perhaps his final performance in a reading of Jean Giraudoux’s The Madwoman of Chaillot in June of this year, wrote:
A master of a talent
A giant of an intellect
A mensch of a man
What a joy it was to know you, dearest Tobias
How you will be missed
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Heart breaking…
Flights of angels
sing thee to thy rest
Hello, I was a good friend of Tobias, a man most dear to me for many years. He and I acted together a long, long time ago, and over the years he was a huge help to me in many ways. I’ve been attempting to contact him, but, having not heard from him on the phone or email, finally thought I’d better check to see how he is as he’d told me of his diminishing powers of concentration. I only now learned, January 7, 2025, of his death last October at 87. I recently turned 86. I cannot express in words the loss I am feeling. I proofed, formatted and uploaded his book to Amazon about his time in Pakistan, happy to be of help to him with that, which meant a lot to him. Please extend my condolences to his family. The world of theatre has lost one of its champions, and the world at large has lost a truly great gentleman, and I have lost a great and true friend.
Tobias and I shared the same birthdate: February 15. He was one year older. I first met him when the director of the first Mt. Hood Rep production, “The Man Who Came to Dinner” (Rick Zimmer who was the Drama teacher at David Douglas High School, and I was the Drama teacher at Parkrose High School) needed a replacement actor for someone who had dropped out. He asked if I would do it. I did, and from then on I was in almost every production at Mt. Hood Rep. and then became a member of the Board.
Whether Tobias was acting or directing it was always a pleasure to be in his company. And when speaking to you, even with others in the room, you were the main focus of his attention. He made you feel important, and that you were the Best actor in the world. He always believed in you and your performance. It was such an honor to work with him. He is always in my heart. I will miss him terribly, as I know will the entire Portland theatre community.