Who was Jack Betts? All about the "Spider-Man" actor as he dies at 96

Actor Jack Betts, known for his work in Gods and Monsters and Spider-Man, among other movies, died on June 19, 2025. The news of his death was shared by his nephew, Dean Sullivan. He died while asleep in his California home. Besides films, Betts also acted on Broadway.

He played the role of Ivan Kipling in the 1968 drama, One Life to Live. Born to John Stephen George Betts and Esther Maj Engstrom on April 11, 1929, Jack Betts was related to President Millard Fillmore.

According to IMDb, the actor was an alumnus of the University of Miami. After finishing his studies in theatre arts, he shifted to New York. He also worked in a lamp factory to get some financial stability.

His motivation to become an actor came after he saw Laurence Olivier’s role in the 1939 romantic film, Wuthering Heights. Speaking of that, Jack Betts once said:

“I remember when I was 10 years old, my mother took me to see Wuthering Heights (1939), and I saw Laurence Olivier on the screen. And I said to myself, ‘I will never do anything else in my life but that. I want to be an actor.’”

He shared a good bond with the late actress Doris Roberts, and the two even shared a home at one point in their lives. They initially crossed paths at New York City’s The Actors Studio. According to The Hollywood Reporter, Jack Betts reflected on their friendship, saying:

“We were best friends to the very end, we had wonderful times together.”

In 2019, Jack Betts said he took acting classes every week

Appearing over a call on The Dev Show in 2021, Jack Betts shared that Clint Eastwood stayed at a hotel next to his during a time in the past. While Eastwood would head to the mountains to film his Westerns, Betts was doing the same for his projects.

However, unlike Eastwood’s films, which were shown globally, Betts said his movies were released in many countries except for Canada and the United States. The actor won the Boderscene Film Festival’s Lifetime Achievement Award in 2018. During a conversation with David Salcido in 2019, he said:

“People that have a great passion desire and a goal but something that they're gonna go for one way or another that they're gonna go for it. That's what I've sense here. I sense a wonderful kind of energy was a direct goal in mine.”

Jack Betts went on:

“That's what it's about. You got to keep that energy going. You got to keep the engine oil and that's why I still take acting classes every Saturday at 9:30. I've been doing that for 35 years now and I take my acting classes and it's an acting class where they have you do three scenes and it's monitored by a by a director of the film director named Howard Deutch.”

He gave an interview at the Arpa International Film Festival on the red carpet in 2019. Jack Betts shared that many of his films continued to be shown internationally.

He said he enjoyed working on spaghetti Westerns. He also mentioned working on a film with Richard Burton called The Assassination of Trotsky, which was filmed in Mexico, including scenes in the actual room where Trotsky was killed. Alongside those projects, he had also worked on a few movies in the U.S.

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