R.I.P.: Rene Auberjonis, Character Actor

René Auberjonois, a prolific actor best known for his roles on the TV shows "Benson" and "Star Trek: Deep Space Nine" and his part in the 1970 film "M.A.S.H." playing Father Mulcahy, has died.

René Murat Auberjonois
(June 1, 1940 – December 8, 2019)

He was 79, according to KNX 1070 AM Los Angeles.

The actor died Sunday at his home in Los Angeles of metastatic lung cancer.

René Auberjonois worked constantly as a character actor in several golden ages, from the dynamic theater of the 1960s to the cinema renaissance of the 1970s to the prime period of network television in the 1980s and 90s — and each generation knew him for something different.

For film fans of the 1970s, he was Father John Mulcahy, the military chaplain who played straight man to the doctors' antics in "M.A.S.H." It was his first significant film role and the first of several for director Robert Altman.

For sitcom watchers of the 1980s, he was Clayton Runnymede Endicott III, the hopelessly highbrow chief of staff at a governor's mansion on "Benson," the ABC series whose title character was a butler played by Robert Guillaume.

And for sci-fi fans of the 1990s and convention-goers ever since, he was Odo, the shape-shifting Changeling and head of space-station security on "Star Trek: Deep Space Nine."

Auberjonois was also a regular on the ABC law-firm dramedy "Boston Legal" from 2004 to 2008.

"I am all of those characters, and I love that," Auberjonois said in a 2011 interview with the "Star Trek" website. "I also run into people, and they think I'm their cousin or their dry cleaner. I love that, too."

Auberjonois was born in New York in 1940, the son of Fernand Auberjonois, Swiss-born foreign correspondent for U.S. newspapers, and the grandson of a Swiss post-impressionist painter also named René Auberjonois.