62 Facts About Ed Asner

Eddie Asner was an American actor and former president of the Screen Actors Guild.

Ed Asner is best remembered for portraying Lou Grant during the 1970s and early 1980s, on both The Mary Tyler Moore Show and its spin-off series Lou Grant, making him one of the few television actors to portray the same character in both a comedy and a drama.

Ed Asner played John Wayne's adversary Bart Jason in the 1966 Western El Dorado.

Ed Asner portrayed Santa Claus in several films, including in 2003's Elf.

In early 2011, Ed Asner returned to television as butcher Hank Greziak in Working Class, the first original sitcom on cable channel CMT.

Ed Asner starred in Michael, Tuesdays and Thursdays, on CBC Television and appeared in The Glades.

Ed Asner had a guest role in Cobra Kai, appearing as Sid Weinberg in seasons one and three.

Eddie Ed Asner was born on November 15,1929, in Kansas City, Missouri, and grew up in Kansas City, Kansas.

Ed Asner was raised in an Orthodox Jewish family and given the Hebrew name Yitzhak.

Ed Asner attended Wyandotte High School in Kansas City, Kansas, and the University of Chicago.

Ed Asner studied journalism in Chicago until a professor advised him there was little money to be made in the profession.

Ed Asner had been working in a steel mill, but he quickly switched to drama, debuting as the martyred Thomas Becket in a campus production of T S Eliot's Murder in the Cathedral.

Ed Asner eventually dropped out of school, going to work as a taxi driver, worked on the assembly line for General Motors, and other odd jobs before being drafted in the military in 1951.

Ed Asner served with the US Army Signal Corps from 1951 to 1953 and appeared in plays that toured Army bases in Europe.

Ed Asner later made frequent guest appearances with the successor to Compass, The Second City.

In New York City, Ed Asner played Jonathan Jeremiah Peachum in the Off-Broadway revival of Threepenny Opera, scored his first Broadway role in Face of a Hero alongside Jack Lemmon in 1960, and began to make inroads as a television actor, having made his TV debut in 1957 on Studio One.

In two notable performances on television, Ed Asner played Detective Sgt.

Ed Asner made his film debut in 1962, in the Elvis Presley vehicle Kid Galahad.

Ed Asner was cast on Jack Lord's ABC drama series Stoney Burke and in the series finale of CBS's The Reporter, starring Harry Guardino.

Ed Asner appeared on Mr Novak, Ben Casey, Gunsmoke, Mission: Impossible, The Outer Limits, The Fugitive, and The Invaders.

In 1963, Ed Asner appeared as George Johnson on The Virginian in the episode "Echo of Another Day".

Ed Asner was best known for his character Lou Grant, who was first introduced on The Mary Tyler Moore Show in 1970.

In 1977, after Moore's series ended, Ed Asner's character was given his own show, Lou Grant.

Ed Asner appeared as a veteran streetwise officer in an episode of the 1973 version of Police Story.

Ed Asner was acclaimed for his role in the ABC miniseries Roots, as Captain Davies, the morally conflicted captain of the Lord Ligonier, the slave ship that brought Kunta Kinte to America.

Ed Asner won one Audie Award and was nominated for two Grammy Awards and an additional Audie for his audiobook work.

Ed Asner was even nominated for a Daytime Emmy Award for Outstanding Performer in an Animated Program but lost to Eartha Kitt for Nick Jr.

Ed Asner provided the voice of the main protagonist Carl Fredricksen in the Academy Award-winning Pixar film Up.

In 2001, Ed Asner was the recipient of the Screen Actors Guild Life Achievement Award.

Ed Asner won more Emmy Awards for performing than any other male actor.

In July 2010, Ed 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.

Ed 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.

Also in 2010, Ed 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, Ed Asner took a supporting role on CMT's first original sitcom Working Class.

Ed Asner 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.

Ed Asner 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.

Ed Asner 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.

Ed 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.

In 2018, Ed Asner was cast in the Netflix dark comedy, Dead to Me, which premiered on May 3,2019.

Ed Asner subsequently toured for the next three years in "concert readings" of the play in more than a dozen cities across the United States.

At the time of his death in August 2021, Ed Asner had completed several roles in a number of TV series and films that were released posthumously, including three productions released on the Disney+ streaming service, he reprised his voice role as Carl Fredricksen from the Pixar film Up in the Disney+ animated streaming miniseries of shorts Dug Days, which was the first to premiere, just three days after his death.

Ed Asner played a posthumous role as the Ghost of Claude in the Halloween special Muppets Haunted Mansion, and provided the voice of Grandpa Heffley in the 2022 Disney+ animated film adaptation Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Rodrick Rules, released over a year after his death.

Ed Asner served two terms as president of the Screen Actors Guild, in which capacity during the 1980s he opposed United States policy in Central America, working closely with the Alliance for Survival.

Ed Asner played a prominent role in the 1980 SAG strike.

Ed Asner was active in a variety of other causes, such as the movement to free Mumia Abu-Jamal and the movement to establish California One Care, single-payer health care in California, for which he created a television advertisement.

Ed Asner endorsed Dennis Kucinich in the 2004 United States presidential election, and Barack Obama during the 2008 United States presidential election.

Ed Asner was formerly a member of the Democratic Socialist Organizing Committee and was a member of DSOC's successor, the Democratic Socialists of America.

Ed Asner believed that his left-wing political views, as well as the publicity surrounding them, were the actual root causes for the show's cancellation.

In 2011, Ed Asner endorsed Democratic candidate Marcy Winograd who finished 4th in the 16-candidate primary behind eventual winner Janice Hahn, in California's 36th congressional district special election.

Ed Asner was on the Entertainment Board of Directors for The Survivor Mitzvah Project, a nonprofit organization dedicated to providing direct emergency aid to elderly and impoverished Holocaust survivors in Eastern Europe.

Ed Asner was a member of the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund, a free speech organization that is dedicated to protecting comic book creators and retailers from prosecutions based on content.

Ed Asner served as an advisor to the Rosenberg Fund for Children, an organization founded by the children of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, which provides benefits for the children of political activists, and was a board member for the wildlife conservation organization Defenders of Wildlife.

Ed Asner sat on the advisory board for Exceptional Minds, a non-profit school and a computer animation studio for young adults on the autism spectrum.

Ed Asner was a supporter of Humane Borders, an organization based in Tucson, Arizona, which maintains water stations in the Sonoran desert for use by undocumented migrants, with the goal of preventing deaths by dehydration and exposure.

Ed Asner was the master of ceremonies at that organization's volunteer dinner in fall 2017.

Ed Asner narrated the documentary film The Oil Factor: Behind the War on Terror.

Ed Asner was adamantly opposed to such a merger, arguing that the planned merger would destroy the SAG's health plan and disempower actors.

In 2021, Ed Asner traveled to Monte Rio, California to support the reopening, revitalization, and shifted focus of the local Monte Rio Theater.

Ed Asner was married to Nancy Lou Sykes from 1959 to 1988.

Ed Asner was a parent and a grandparent to autistic children and was involved with the 501 nonprofit organization Autism Speaks.

Ed Asner served as a board member and adviser for Aspiritech, a nonprofit organization that trains high-functioning autistic persons to test software and perform quality-assurance services for companies.

Ed Asner died of natural causes at his home in the Tarzana neighborhood of Los Angeles, California, on the morning of August 29,2021, at the age of 91.