Grodon, Charles Sidney,
1935-2021, American film actor, writer, and director, b.
Pittsburgh, Pa. Grodon briefly attended the Univ. of Miami and then began
acting at the Pittsburgh Playhouse for 18 months before moving to New York.
From 1956-59 he studied with noted acting teacher Uta Hagen. He found a few
roles on stage and TV before making his Broadway debut in 1962 in
Tchin-Tchin. He made his directing debut on Broadway in
1968 with Lovers and Other Strangers. He was passed up for
the lead role in Mike Nichols ’s
The Graduate, but landed the lead in Elaine May’s The Heartbreak
Kid (1972), establishing him as a comedic film star. In 1975,
he costarred with Ellen Burstyn in the Broadway hit Same Time, Next
Year. He continued to appear in films, including Heaven
Can Wait (1978) and perhaps his best-known role along with
Robert DeNiro in the
comic action film, Midnight Run (1988). He found mass
popularity in the family friendly comedies Beethoven (1992;
Beethoven 2nd, 1994) playing the distraught father of a
family dealing with a new pet. He was a regular on TV talk shows, and in the
mid-‘90s, became a cable news commentator. He returned as an actor in
the early 2010s, appearing on the comedy series Louie
starring Louis C.K. He also wrote plays and screenplays along with several
books combining memoir and commentary on contemporary life.
See his It Would Be So Nice If You Weren’t Here: My Journey
Through Show Business (1989); We’re Ready for
You, Mr. Grodin: Behind the Scenes at Talk Shows, Movies and Elsewhere
(1994)
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