ED ASNER

(15 November 1929 - 29 August 2021)

The American actor Ed Asner, who has died of natural causes aged 91, must have been the busiest actor in the US. Not only did he make over four hundred appearances in films and on television, but he also had a long stage career. He will be forever remembered as Lou Grant, the irascible newspaperman, first of all in The Mary Tyler Moore Show from 1970, after which the character was given his own series, Lou Grant, from 1977 to 1982. Grant also appeared on two other TV shows, Rhoda and Roseanne. Born in Kansas City to Ashkenazi Jewish immigrant parents, Asner first studied journalism but then turned to acting before being drafted into the army, after which he co-founded the Playwrights Theatre Company in Chicago which moved in the mid-1950s to New York as the Compass Players which then became the Second City company. In 1974 he co-founded with Richard Dreyfuss the Los Angeles Theatre Works.

His TV debut in 1957 was in the Studio One series and he made his first film in 1962, the Elvis Presley starrer Kid Galahad. More TV work included The Untouchables, Route 66, Ben Casey, Gunsmoke, Mission: Impossible and The Fugitive, etc. Much of Asner's career was devoted to television but he also made more films from 1965 including John Sturges' The Satan Bug, Howard Hawks' El Dorado with John Wayne, Blake Edwards' Gunn, Change of Habit with Presley again, Sidney Lumet's Daniel, Oliver Stone's JFK, Jon Favreau's Elf (as Santa Claus, a role he played five times) and Asner was also the voice of the old man who floats his house to South America in Pixar's animated journey Up. He obviously never stopped working and in 2017 alone worked on sixteen projects, while there are still another eight films and TV programmes yet to be released.

Ed Asner had multiple Emmy Award nominations, winning a record seven, including Roots and Rich Man, Poor Man, alongside five Golden Globes and umpteen other international awards. He was a political activist and campaigner for Liberal Democrats and he wrote a book explaining why. He was a past president of the Screen Actors' Guild, receiving their Life Achievement Award along with his induction into the Academy of Televison Arts & Sciences' Hall of Fame. Ed Asner was first married to Nancy Sykes with whom he has three children, Kate and twins Matthew and Liza. In 1998 he married Cindy Gilmore but they divorced in 2015. He is also the father of Charles Asner from a relationship with Carol Jean Vogelman.

MICHAEL DARVELL