Reggie Bannister, who became a horror icon for his role as the action hero fighting the evil Tall Man in the Phantasm franchise, died Sunday morning. He was 80.

Bannister died at his home in Crestline, his wife, Gigi Bannister, told TMZ. She said the actor was exposed to Agent Orange while serving in the U.S. military during the Vietnam War and later battled Lewy body dementia and Parkinson’s disease.

Born on Sept. 9, 1945, in Long Beach, California, Bannister went on to pursue a career in entertainment that spanned more than 40 years.

While he appeared in dozens of films and movies, he was most known for playing a fictionalized version of himself named Reggie in the Phantasm cult classic horror franchise, created by filmmaker Don Coscarelli. He played easygoing ice cream vendor turned shotgun-wielding action hero that took on Tall Man, the film’s main villain.

After starring in the franchise’s five movies, including Phantasm (1979), Phantasm II (1988), Phantasm III: Lord of the Dead (1994), Phantasm IV: Oblivion (1998) and Phantasm: Ravager (2016), Bannister was eventually dubbed “the hardest working man in horror.”

Bannister’s other acting credits included Silent Night, Deadly Night 4: Initiation (1990), Wishmaster (1997), Bubba Ho-Tep (2002), Journeyman (2005), Cemetery Gates (2006), Fallen Angels (2006), The Rage (2007), Sigma Die! (2007), The Quiet Ones (2010), Sawblade (2010), Primitive (2011), Bloody Bloody Bible Camp (2012), Disaster Wars: Earthquake vs. Tsunami (2013) and The Obsidian Curse (2016), among others. He also served as a producer on several projects.

In addition to acting, Bannister was also a prolific musician and singer-songwriter. Throughout his career, he released six albums spanning the rock, folk and country genres.

Enough time has passed for Greta Lee open up about her fight to get cast in “Past Lives” — and that includes a “humiliating” experience that involved megaproducer Scott Rudin and “Barbie” filmmaker Greta Gerwig.

In Monday’s episode of the “Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend” podcast, the host asked Lee about her touch-and-go experience with Celine Song’s “Past Lives” script early on and how she initially missed out on the role.

“I think enough time has passed now that I can tell the story,” Lee said, joking that she’s going to share more on “the murders I’ve committed” to land the lead role of Nora in the Oscar-nominated A24 indie.

“No, it really was such a messy ride. And it happens a lot with casting … You find out, like, oh, I was not only the second choice, I was the 15th choice or whatever it is,” Lee said. “But in this case, I really was told by the universe several times that this was not going to be my job, and at a certain point, it just became so absurd and insulting.”

Lee admitted she didn’t even want to audition for “Past Lives” at first and had to be convinced to do it because she was intimidated to speak the film’s Korean onscreen — “that wasn’t something I was looking for,” she said.

“But I was convinced, did the tape and then didn’t get it and was like to my agents, ‘Come on, see, like, what’d you make me do.’ And they’re like, ‘No, no, they thought that you are just too old.”

In the cast of this first round of casting, that was actually the hard truth, Lee said, because they had cast a male Korean actor as the co-lead who was “much younger” than her.

“But then it fell apart, and it came back almost exactly a year later. Same thing, and I think I had sort of started talking to them, and at the time — this is just wild,” Lee sets up.

Turns out, Rudin was a producer on the through its earlier stages before ultimately dropping out, and she got a call and voicemail from his office stating that he was ready to have a lunch meeting with her at Cafe Cluny in New York.

“I thought I got ‘Past Lives’ because I thought, Oh my god, this is amazing. He wants to meet me at Cafe Cluny to tell me that I got this job. I listened to the message again and again, and I played it — I sent it to my agents, and they played it, and we realized collectively that the message was actually for Greta Gerwig,” Lee said, describing the excitement and conversations she had with her team about meeting with Rudin as “such a publicly humiliating experience.”

From that point on, Lee said, “I really thought, like, please leave me alone with this job. I get it. I’m too old, and I’m too American, or whatever.”

“Yeah, and you’re not Greta Gerwig,” O’Brien quipped.

Of course, the tides turned yet again and Lee was ultimately cast in the project that would go on to launch her career a true lead actress in a two-time Oscar-nominated debut feature from Song.

As for Gerwig? She doesn’t remember what her lunch meeting with Rudin was for.

“[It was] for something completely — who knows what that was for? I don’t know,” Lee said. “I’ve told her now since, and she she was like, ‘Oh my gosh, I have no idea.’”

Listen to Lee’s full “Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend” interview here. The actress next stars in Netflix’s “The Last House” and co-leads indie “Late Fame” opposite Willem Dafoe.

While the internet has been filled with fan theories around the new sci-fi adventure The End of Oak Street, producer J.J. Abrams is quick to cut some of them down.

The film, directed by David Robert Mitchell, follows a family (led by Anne Hathaway and Ewan McGregor) whose suburban street is suddenly uprooted and lands among the dinosaurs in prehistoric times. In the lead-up to its release, some online have speculated that the movie is secretly connected to Abrams’ Cloverfield franchise. However, the filmmaker told The Hollywood Reporter at the L.A. premiere that this was not the case.

“The only connection to our Cloverfield movies is that Ewan’s partner is Mary Elizabeth Winstead, who was the star of 10 Cloverfield Lane, who we were very lucky to get to work with and who I adore,” Abrams said. “So there was that, but other than that, people are just making connections that they happen to see.”

The producer also explained the decision to take on a dinosaur genre that has long been dominated by the Jurassic Park franchise, saying, “This was a movie set in suburban America — our neighborhoods, our backyards, our living rooms — so to have dinosaurs in that world, in our world, there was a juxtaposition that was so immediately exciting. It wasn’t just cool dinosaurs; it was dinosaurs interacting with things and people and our front lawn, and suddenly it was a very different experience even reading it.”

Aside from his day job, Abrams is also dad to pop star Gracie Abrams, who will soon be making her acting debut in an A24 movie from Babygirl director Halina Reijn. Of his daughter crossing over to join his side of the industry, the filmmaker said, “I know how hard she’s working to do all she’s doing so I’m thrilled for her. As a parent, all you can do is hope that the work that your kids do fulfills them, so as long as that’s what’s happening, and I know how hard she’s working, I’m thrilled for her.”

The End of Oak Street hits theaters on Friday.