Carl Weathers, who went from doling out bone-crunching hits as a linebacker for the Oakland Raiders to delivering knockout punches on the large display screen as Apollo Creed, the nemesis of Sylvester Stallone’s lovable-lug prizefighter in “Rocky,” serving to to spark one in all Hollywood’s most profitable franchises, died on Thursday. He was 76.

His household mentioned in an announcement that he “died peacefully in his sleep.” The assertion didn’t give a trigger or say the place he died.

Mr. Weathers had an extended and assorted appearing profession that took him far past the boxing ring. He displayed his vary over some 80 movie and tv credit. Starting in the 2000s, he memorably parodied himself as an appearing coach on the sitcom “Arrested Development.” In more moderen years he was the voice of Combat Carl in the animated film “Toy Story 4” and performed Greef Karga in the “Star Wars” tv sequence “The Mandalorian,” incomes an Emmy Award nomination in 2021 for excellent visitor actor in a drama sequence.

Earlier, in the Adam Sandler golf comedy “Happy Gilmore” (1996), Mr. Weathers earned laughs as Chubbs, who had been a star of the skilled circuit earlier than he misplaced his hand in an alligator assault.

Even so, his Apollo Creed character solid an extended shadow. After the discharge in 1976 of “Rocky,” which was nominated for 10 Academy Awards and received three, together with greatest image, Mr. Weathers reprised his position in the following three installments, evolving from the title character’s motor-mouthed rival to his trusted pal and coach.

His Creed bought yet one more shot at boxing immortality in the exuberant, if cartoonish, “Rocky IV” (1985), in which he squared off in opposition to the Soviet supervillain Drago (Dolph Lundgren), an icy, robotic mega-pugilist.

Creed’s star-spangled entrance in the fateful match — carrying sequins and an Uncle Sam hat whereas strutting and prancing amongst on line casino showgirls as James Brown, showing as himself, belts out the anthem “Living in America” — appeared at the time to be an apotheosis of the morning-in-America popular culture patriotism of the Reagan period.

The good vibes wouldn’t final to the top of the sequence, nonetheless, as Drago pummeled Creed to dying with a battering ram left to the jaw.

With his signature character killed off, Mr. Weathers anxious about his skilled future.

“After so many years of doing a character who is indelible, who is so well recognized around the world — people in every language who have seen movies have seen the ‘Rocky’ movies and have seen Apollo Creed — what happens is very often people begin to confuse you with the character,” ” he as soon as mentioned in a tv interview. “There is no Carl Weathers.”

“Movie producers,” he added, “tend to do the same thing.”

His fears would show unwarranted.

With his he-man charisma and sculpted physique, Mr. Weathers matched bulging biceps with Arnold Schwarzenegger in the 1987 motion film “Predator.”

A 12 months later, he leveraged his Rocky fame to leading-man standing taking part in a crusading Detroit cop in “Action Jackson.” Review ing that film for The New York Times, Walter Goodman famous that Mr. Weathers was “a member of the highly-developed-upper-torso school of movie hero.”

Mr. Weathers chafed at such categorizations. “This label of movie star doesn’t really have anything to do with being a really fine actor or artist,” he mentioned in an interview with British GQ in 2020.

“Enough promotion of any person, enough movies where that person gets to be shown in a particular light, can make them a movie star,” he continued. “That doesn’t mean their chops are there as an actor to play a character that is perhaps unlike them, with complicated ideas behind the dialogue.”

Carl Weathers was born on Jan. 14, 1948, in New Orleans. He mentioned in interviews that he thought of appearing his past love, and that he started performing in performs in elementary faculty. Still, his highschool soccer prowess led him to play defensive finish for San Diego State University underneath the longer term N.F.L. Hall of Fame coach Don Coryell throughout a bountiful two-year run for the Aztecs.

The staff went 11-0 in 1969, though Mr. Weathers missed a lot of the season with a knee harm. All the whereas he stored his appearing goals alive, graduating with a level in theater arts. But he additionally stored his sights on soccer, and he grew to become an undrafted linebacker the following 12 months for the N.F.L.’s most infamous wild bunch, the Raiders.

An enduring profession in the league was an extended shot, although.

“He was what we call a tweener,” Raymond Chester, a decent finish who had been a teammate of his, mentioned in an interview final 12 months with Sports Illustrated. “Carl was strong and fast and had good size, but he was small for a linebacker. Today, Carl would be a safety. That would have been the perfect position for him. He had everything it took. He was smart, he could run like a deer, and he was chiseled. He was a magnificent athlete.”

Mr. Weathers appeared in seven video games with Oakland in 1970. But the following season, throughout a follow after the primary sport, he was summoned to see John Madden, the Raiders coach and future star broadcaster. He was being reduce from the roster, the coach advised him, saying, “You’re just too sensitive.”

“I couldn’t let it go, man,” Mr. Weathers advised Sports Illustrated, recalling the second. “It kind of put a chip on my shoulder on one hand, and it was like a wound on the other, because as a football player — certainly as a professional football player — the last thing you want to hear is that you’re too sensitive. On the other hand, without that sensitivity, how could I be an actor? How could I be an actor of any worth, really?”

For all his blood-and-guts roles over time, it was on the set of the lighthearted “Happy Gilmore” that Mr. Weathers suffered severe harm, fracturing two vertebrae in a stunt fall. “Fortunately, being an athlete and having been injured a number of times, you kind of learn to live with pain,” he advised GQ.

By the mid-Nineteen Seventies, he was making common tv appearances on exhibits like “Good Times,” “Kung Fu” and “The Six Million Dollar Man.”

His large break with “Rocky” was quickly to comply with, though issues with Mr. Stallone, who additionally wrote the movie, didn’t get off to a clean begin at the audition.

“There was nobody to read with, and they said, ‘You’re going to read with the writer,’” Mr. Weathers advised The Hollywood Reporter in 2015.

“We read through the scene,” he continued, “and at the end of it, I didn’t feel like it had really sailed, that the scene had sailed, and they were quiet, and there was this moment of awkwardness — I felt, anyway. So I just blurted out, ‘I could do a lot better if you got me a real actor to work with.’”

Mr. Stallone, it turned out, appreciated his Apollo Creed-like hearth. “Sometimes,” Mr. Weathers added, “the mistakes are the ones that get you the gig.”

Jesus Jiménez contributed reporting.