Best passed away on Monday night (06Apr15) at a hospice in Hickory, North Carolina following a brief illness and complications from pneumonia, according to his longtime friend Steve Latshaw.

The actor was best known for playing bumbling Sheriff Rosco P. Coltrane on TV series The Dukes Of Hazzard, which ran from 1979 to 1985.

His co-star John Schneider, who played Bo Duke, tells Charlotteobserver.com, "I learned more about acting in front of a camera from Jimmie Best in an afternoon than from anyone else in a year... When asked to cry on camera, he would say, 'Sure thing - which eye?' I'm forever thankful to have cut my teeth in the company of such a fine man."

During his career, Best appeared in more than 80 movies and 600 TV shows, including The Twilight Zone, Rawhide and Alfred Hitchcock Presents, and continued to perform in community theatre until last year (14).

In the 1970s, he formed an acting school teaching film techniques in Hollywood for 25 years, working with the likes of Quentin Tarantino, Burt Reynolds, Clint Eastwood and Farrah Fawcett.

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