Dennis Farina, 69, actor and former police officer

NEW YORK - Dennis Farina, 69, a onetime Chicago police officer who became a popular character actor and played a TV cop on

Law & Order

during his wide-ranging career, has died.

He had a blood clot in a lung, said his publicist, Lori De Waal, and died Monday morning in a Scottsdale, Ariz., hospital.

For three decades, Mr. Farina was a character actor who displayed remarkable dexterity, charm, and toughness, making effective use of his craggy face, ivory smile, and ample mustache. He could be as dapper as Fred Astaire and as full of threat as Clint Eastwood. His gift has been described as wry tough-guy panache.

"Sometimes you can take those dramatic roles and maybe interject a little humor into them, and I think the reverse also works," Mr. Farina said in a 2007 interview with the Associated Press. "One of the funny things in life to me is a guy who takes himself very seriously."

Mr. Farina's films include Saving Private Ryan, (1998), Out of Sight (1998), Midnight Run (1988), Manhunter (1986), and his breakout and perhaps most beloved film, Get Shorty (1995), a comedic romp in which he played a mob boss.

He recently completed shooting a comedy, Lucky Stiff.

Mr. Farina also had numerous television roles, and was featured in a current commercial for Comcast Xfinity Internet.

He was Detective Joe Fontana on Law & Order during the 2004-06 seasons, replacing longtime cast member Jerry Orbach, who died in 2004. Law & Order executive producer Dick Wolf said he was "stunned and saddened to hear about Dennis' unexpected passing."

Also on TV, Mr. Farina was a regular in the star-studded 2011-12 HBO horse-track drama Luck. He starred in the 1980s cult favorite Crime Story, and his stylish private-eye drama Buddy Faro (1998) was warmly received if little watched. He followed that up with a 2002 sitcom flop, The In-Laws. Last season he guest-starred on the Fox comedy New Girl.

A veteran of the Chicago theater, Mr. Farina appeared in Joseph Mantegna's Bleacher Bums and Streamers, directed by Terry Kinney, among other productions.

Born Feb. 29, 1944, Mr. Farina was raised in Chicago, the seventh child of Italian immigrants.

After three years in the Army, he served with the Chicago Police Department for 18 years, both as a uniformed officer and a burglary detective, before he found his way into acting as he neared his 40s.

His first film was the 1981 action drama Thief, directed by Michael Mann - a future collaborator on numerous projects as recently as Luck - whom he had met through a mutual friend.

In Thief he had a small role as a criminal henchman, and, while not initially planning a career change, found the film world "very interesting," as he told the AP in 2004, and concluded it could be a great sideline.

"I remember going to the set that day and being intrigued by the whole thing. I liked it. And everybody was extremely nice to me," he recalled.

He continued to work as a detective while taking occasional dramatic roles, and even took a leave of absence from the Chicago force to star in Crime Story before he made the full-time acting plunge.

"If I'm characterized as a character actor, that's fine with me," he said in 2007. "In the kind of roles I do, you can do them and walk away from it and have a really nice time."

Mr. Farina is survived by three sons, six grandchildren, and his longtime partner, Marianne Cahill.