Easton Press Ed Asner books
Actor Ed Asner
Asner was born Eddie Asner in Kansas City, Missouri, across the river from the Kansas City, Kansas home of his Russian American parents, Lizzie (née Seliger), a housewife, and Morris David Asner, who ran a second-hand shop. He was raised in an Orthodox Jewish family. Asner attended historic Wyandotte High School and the University of Chicago. He served with the U.S. Army Signal Corps and, most crucially, spent many hours in the Granada movie theater in Kansas City, Kansas.
Acting
Before he landed his role with Mary Tyler Moore, Asner guest starred in such television series as NBC's The Outlaws (1962) and in the series finale of CBS's The Reporter in the episode entitled "Vote for Murder." The Reporter focuses on a fictitious New York Globe newspaper as seen through the lives of two of its employees, played by Harry Guardino and Gary Merrill.
Asner is best best known for his character Lou Grant, who was first introduced on the The Mary Tyler Moore Show in 1970. In 1977, after the end of the Mary Tyler Moore show, Asner's character was given his own show, Lou Grant, which ran from 1977-1982. In contrast to the Mary Tyler Moore show, which was a thirty minute comedy, the Lou Grant show was an hour long award-winning drama about journalism.
Asner is also known for his acclaimed role as Captain Davies, from the mini-series Roots, the man who kidnapped Kunta Kinte and sold him into slavery, a role that earned Asner an Emmy Award. While Asner's character in Roots was highly developed, full of metaphors on tortured ethics and the morality of slavery, biographer Alex Haley would later admit he had no idea who the actual Captain was who had commanded the historic slaver which had kidnapped his ancestor.
Asner was a member of the Playwrights Theatre Company in Chicago, but left for New York before members of that company regrouped as the Compass Players in the mid-1950s. He later made guest appearances with the successor to Compass, The Second City, and is considered part of The Second City extended family. Asner has also had an extensive voice acting career. He provided the voices for J. Jonah Jameson on the 1990s animated television series Spider-Man, Hudson on Gargoyles, Jabba the Hutt on the radio version of Star Wars, Master Vrook from Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic and its sequel, Roland Daggett on Batman: The Animated Series, Cosgrove on Freakazoid!, Ed Wuncler on The Boondocks, and Granny Goodness in various DC Comics animated series. Both he and his late friend Linda Gary voiced many cartoons for the Filmation company. In 1993, he narrated the short documentary Legacy for Efrain, which explores the impact of the nonprofit world hunger organization Heifer International. In 2001 was the protagonist for "Papa Giovanni XXIII" fiction for Rai One (Italy). He made an appearance on the show Curb Your Enthusiasm in 2001. In February 2009, Asner guest-starred in the web series Star-ving. More recently, Asner provided the voice of Carl Fredricksen in the 2009 Pixar film Up. He received great critical praise for the role, with one critic going so far as to suggest "They should create a new category for this year's Academy Award for Best Vocal Acting in an animated film and name Asner as the first recipient." Asner is the only actor to win the Emmy award for a sitcom and a drama for the same role—Lou Grant.
In 2009, Asner was given the Lifetime Feel Good Achievement Award at that year's Feel Good Film Festival in Los Angeles.
sner won more Emmy Awards for performing than any other male actor (seven, including five for the role of Lou Grant). In 1996, he was inducted into the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences Hall of Fame. In July 2010, Asner completed recording sessions for Shattered Hopes: The True Story of the Amityville Murders; a documentary on the 1974 DeFeo murders in Amityville, New York. Asner served as the narrator for the film, which covers a forensic analysis of the murders, the trial in which 23-year-old DeFeo son Ronald DeFeo Jr., was convicted of the killings, and the subsequent "haunting" story which is revealed to be a hoax. Also in 2010, Asner played the title role in FDR, a stage production about the life of Franklin Delano Roosevelt; he subsequently continued to tour the play throughout the country. In January 2011, Asner took a supporting role on CMT's first original sitcom Working Class. He made an appearance in the independent comedy feature Not Another B Movie, and had a role as billionaire Warren Buffett in HBO's economic drama Too Big to Fail (2011). In 2013, he guest starred as Mr. Finger in The Crazy Ones.
Asner also provided voice-over narration for many documentaries and films about social activism, including Tiger by the Tail, a documentary film detailing the efforts of Eric Mann and the Campaign to keep General Motors' Van Nuys assembly plant running. He also recorded for a public radio show and podcast, Playing On Air, appearing in Warren Leight's The Final Interrogation of Ceaucescu's Dog with Jesse Eisenberg, and Mike Reiss's New York Story. Asner was the voice-over narrator for the 2016 documentary Behind the Fear: The Hidden Story of HIV, directed by Nicole Zwiren, a controversial study on the AIDS debate.
A 2014 documentary titled My Friend Ed, directed by Sharon Baker, focused on the actor's life and career. It won Best Short Documentary at the New York City Independent Film Festival.
During interviews for a 2019 book on the history of Chicago theater, Asner told the author he preferred to be credited for his work as "Edward" rather than "Ed" because he felt the longer name held the page or screen better.
In 2018, Asner was cast in the Netflix dark comedy, Dead to Me, which premiered on May 3, 2019. The series also stars Christina Applegate, Linda Cardellini, and James Marsden. Asner also had a recurring guest role in the 2018–present series Cobra Kai, portraying Johnny Lawrence's step-father, Sid Weinberg, in seasons one and three. In 2020 he guest starred in an episode of Modern Family and in 2021 played himself in a sketch on Let's Be Real. The 2019 feature documentary Ed Asner: On Stage and Off premiered at the American Documentary Film Festival in Palm Springs, which Asner attended. In 2013, he played Santa in Christmas on the Bayou. Beginning in 2016, Asner took on the role of Holocaust survivor Milton Salesman in Jeff Cohen's acclaimed play The Soap Myth in a reading at Lincoln Center's Bruno Walter Theatre in New York City. He subsequently toured for the next three years in "concert readings" of the play in more than a dozen cities across the United States. In 2019, PBS flagship station WNET filmed the concert reading at New York's Center for Jewish History for their All Arts channel. The performance, which is available for free, world-wide live-streaming, co-stars Tovah Feldshuh, Ned Eisenberg, and Liba Vaynberg. In the week before his death, Asner told his frequent collaborators, Greg Palast and Leni Badpenny, that he soon would be doing three one-act plays. In 2021, Asner played the role of Claude in the Halloween special Muppets Haunted Mansion.
Source and additional information: Ed Asner