John Carroll O'Connor (August 2, 1924 - June 21, 2001) was an Emmy Award-winning American actor, producer and director whose television career spanned four decades. Known at first for playing the role of Maj. Gen. Colt in the 1970s cult movie, Kelly's Heroes, he later found fame as the bigoted workingman Archie Bunker, the main character in the 1970s CBS television sitcoms All in the Family (1971 to 1979) and Archie Bunker's Place (1979 to 1983). O'Connor later starred in the 1980s NBC television crime drama In the Heat of the Night, where he played the role of Police Chief Bill Gillespie from 1988 to 1994. At the end of his career in the late 1990s, he played the father of Jamie Stemple Buchman (Helen Hunt) on Mad About You.

Carroll was born in Manhattan and raised in Forest Hills, a community of Queens, New York. After high school in 1942, he joined the Merchant Marines and worked on ships in the Atlantic. In 1946, he enrolled at the University of Montana to study English. While there, he became interested in theater. During one of the amateur productions, he met his future wife, Nancy Fields, whom he married in 1951. He moved to Ireland where he continued his theatrical studies at the National University of Ireland. He was discovered during one of his college productions and was signed to appear at the Dublin Gate Theater. He worked in theater in Europe until 1954 when he returned to New York. His attempts to land on Broadway failed and he taught high school until 1958. Finally in 1958, he landed an Off-Broadway production, "Ulysses In Downtown". He followed that with a production that was directed by Peter Bogdanovich. At the same time, he was getting attention on TV. He worked in a great many character roles throughout the 1960s. A pilot for "Those Were The Days" was first shot in 1968 based on the English hit, "Till Death Do Us Part", but was rejected by the networks. In 1971, it was re-shot and re-cast as "All in the Family" (1971) and the rest is history.