Glenn Shadix, best remembered for his portrayal of a portly, pretentious designer in the movie “Beetlejuice,” died on Tuesday at his home in Birmingham, Ala. He was 58.The cause was not immediately known, but Mr. Shadix’s sister, Susan
Gagne, told The Birmingham News that he had been using a wheelchair for
mobility and appeared to have fallen in his kitchen and struck his head.
Mr. Shadix was born on April 15, 1952, in Bessemer, a Birmingham suburb.
His personal manager, Juliet Green, said that in addition to his
sister, he is survived by his mother.
Ms. Green said that Mr. Shadix, who appeared in more than 30 films, had
one of his closest professional relationships with the director Tim Burton.
He did one of the voices in the animated feature “The Nightmare Before
Christmas,” written by Mr. Burton, and he was cast in two films directed
by Mr. Burton, the remake of “Planet of the Apes” and, most memorably,
“Beetlejuice,” the 1988 horror-comedy that also starred Michael Keaton as a troublemaking ghost and Winona Ryder as a teenager who befriends two other ghosts, played by Alec Baldwin and Geena Davis.
In “Beetlejuice” Mr. Shadix played Otho, an uppity interior designer
hired to redecorate the house where the recently deceased couple used
to live; he ends up trying his hand at the occult to summon their
ghosts, who want to evict the new residents.
In a 2008 interview he said he understood why the film had acquired a cult following.
“We had so much fun filming,” he said, “that I had a feeling something very special was happening.”