(Newser) – Miguel Ferrer, who brought stern authority to his featured role on the CBS hit NCIS: Los Angeles and, before that, to NBC crime drama Crossing Jordan, has died, the AP reports. CBS says Ferrer died Thursday of cancer at his Los Angeles home. He was 61. He had played Assistant Director Owen Granger on NCIS: Los Angeles since 2012. Before that, he played the chief medical examiner and gruff-but-supportive boss to series star Jill Hennessy for the six seasons of Crossing Jordan. A native of Santa Monica, Calif., Ferrer was the son of Academy Award-winning actor Jose Ferrer and singer-actress Rosemary Clooney, and a cousin of George Clooney, who issued a statement Thursday afternoon.

"Today, history will mark giant changes in our world," Clooney said, "and lost to most will be that on the same day Miguel Ferrer lost his battle to throat cancer. But not lost to his family. Miguel made the world brighter and funnier and his passing is felt so deeply in our family that events of the day ... pale in comparison." Ferrer began his career in the early 1980s with guest shots on many TV series. In 1990 he scored a signature role as FBI Agent Albert Rosenfield on Twin Peaks. He reprised that character for the 1992 movie Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me, and he'll encore it yet again for Showtime's Twin Peaks revival airing this spring. He also appeared in more than 40 movies, including RoboCop, where he played the villainous Bob Morton, designer of the title character. (Read more NCIS stories.)

