James Avery

James La Rue Avery was born November 27, 1945, and built a career on presence: the kind of actor who could anchor a sitcom or disappear into a villain's snarl. He played Judge Michael Conover on L.A. Law, lent his voice to Shredder in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Haroud Hazi Bin in Aladdin, and showed up in The Brady Bunch Movie as Steve Yeager. But it was Philip Banks — the stern, surprisingly tender patriarch on The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air — that became his through-line, the role people quoted at his memorial. He later played Dr. Crippen on The Closer from 2005 to 2007. Avery died Decemb…