Fame was hard earned by Ed Asner.
Born in Kansas City in 1929, he didn't really become a recognisable face until his forties - thanks to the breakthrough role of Lou Grant in 'The Mary Tyler Moore Show'.
But he would go on to make his mark as a left of centre political voice as well as appearing in films like Oliver Stone's 'JFK,' Jon Favreau's 'Elf' and Pete Docter's Disney Pixar classic 'Up'.
Raised in an Orthodox Jewish immigrant household, Asner's Russian mother was a housewife as her Lithuanian husband ran a second-hand shop and junkyard.
His birth name was Yitzhak Asner and he attended Wyandotte High School before studying journalism at the University of Chicago.
A star pupil in Hebrew school, his first taste of acting came on a radio station as a teenager, performing in 15 minute dramas created with his classmates and teacher Florence Moore.
Asner's interest in journalism waned after a Professor told him there was no money in it as a profession but ironically it was the role of a grouchy newsman that would later earn him fame.
He switched his interest instead to drama, playing the English martyr Thomas Becket in a college production of TS Eliot's 'Murder in the Cathedral'.
However he dropped out of education, finding work as a taxi driver and working on the Assembly line in General Motors before being drafted into the US Army in 1951, serving for two years in the Signal Corps in various posts around Europe.
Following military service he returned to acting, helping to establish the Playwrights Theatre Company in Chicago.
Now firmly fixed on an acting career, he headed to New York where he grafted and started to land off-Broadway roles.
Asner caught the eye of directors and critics for his performance as Mr Peachum in an acclaimed 1956 revival of Berthold Brecht's 'The Threepenny Opera' with Lotte Lenya, Jerry Stiller, Jerry Orbach and Bea Arthur.
His first Broadway role was opposite Jack Lemmon in the 1957 death penalty play 'Face of a Hero'.
He made his TV debut around this time in the CBS drama anthology 'Studio One,' appearing as a juror.
Asner followed that up with a guest appearance as a police sergeant on the syndicated crime series 'Decoy'.
In 1959, Asner married Nancy Sykes with whom he had three children Matthew and Liza who were twins and Kate.
The marriage would last until 1988 - a year after he became a father for the fourth time with a son Charles whose mother was Carol Jean Vogelman.
During the 1960s, Asner would acquire more television drama experience with appearances in episodes of the CBS crime drama series 'Route 66,' 'Alfred Hitchcock Presents,' 'The Alfred Hitchcock Hour,' its medical drama 'The Nurses,' its courtroom drama 'The Defenders,' its journalism drama 'The Reporter,' its Western series 'Gunsmoke' and the Western sci-fi mash-up 'The Wild, Wild West,' its spy series 'Mission Impossible,' two episodes of ABC's police procedural 'Naked City,' its crime drama 'Target: The Corruptors!,' 'The Untouchables,' its science fiction series 'The Outer Limits' and 'Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea,' the popular detective series 'Burke's Law,' three episodes of its crime drama 'The Fugitive' and its series 'The FBI,' NBC's Western series 'Outlaws' and 'The Virginian,' its medical drama 'Dr Kildare,' its espionage spin-off 'The Girl from U.N.C.L.E,' the crime drama 'Ironside' and the drama anthology series 'Bob Hope Presents The Chrysler Theatre'.
His first taste of the movies came in 1961, with a minor role in John Peyser's drama 'The Murder Men' with James Coburn and Dorothy Dandridge.
His next film was Phil Karlson's 1962 hit musical 'Kid Galahad' with Elvis Presley, Gig Young and Charles Bronson in which he had an uncredited role as an Assistant DA.
John Sturges would direct him in the 1965 science fiction suspense film 'The Satan Bug' with George Maharis, Anne Francis, Dana Andrews and Richard Basehart in which he played one of two thugs involved in a terror plot.
He also played a detective engaged in the hunt for a woman in peril in Sydney Pollack's directorial debut 'The Slender Thread' which starred Sidney Poitier, Anne Bancroft and Telly Savalas.
However the film drew lukewarm reviews and quickly died at the box office.
There were also roles in TV movies such as William Graham's 1966 thriller 'The Doomsday Flight' with Jack Lord, Edmond O'Brien and Van Johnson for NBC about a terrorist bomb plot on a commercial aircraft which fared well in the ratings, CBS Playhouse's Emmy nominated 'Sadbird' in 1969 with Tyne Daly and Walter Grauman's ABC horror thriller 'Daughter of the Mind' with Ray Milland, Don Murray and Gene Tierney.
Asner's next big screen outing was as a CIA chief in Jerry Thorpe's underwhelming 1967 spy thriller 'The Venetian Affair' with Robert Vaughn, Boris Karloff and Elke Sommer.
In Howard Hawks' classic Western 'El Dorado,' he joined John Wayne, Robert Mitchum and James Caan, taking on the main villain's role as a greedy, wealthy landowner who liked to muscle families out of their property.
A year before they ended up working together on TV, Asner and Mary Tyler Moore collaborated on William A Graham's 1969 musical 'Change of Habit' which also starred Elvis in one of the singer's most critically derided films.
1970 was to be the watershed year for Asner's television career as he notched up guest appearances in the ABC police drama 'Dan August' with Burt Reynolds, the first series of its crime series 'The Mod Squad,' and a role in Walter Grauman's ABC movie of the week 'The Old Man Who Cried Wolf' with Edward G Robinson and Martin Balsam.
However he also landed the part of Lou Grant, the gruff boss of Mary Tyler Moore's Minneapolis news show on CBS's sitcom 'The Mary Tyler Moore Show'.
Asner was first approached about auditioning for the part while making a TV movie called 'Doug Sellby, DA'.
He later told the Hollywood Reporter in a 2021 interview published just three days before his passing: "Gavin MacLeod preceded me at the reading.
"He knew I was following him I'm and he said I'd be better suited for the role and he was better suited for Murray.
"Anyway, they had me come in and read, I plodded through the reading and Jim Brooks said: 'That was a very intelligent reading.
"And I mumbled: 'Yeah but it wasn't funny'.
"They said: 'Why don't we have you back to read with Mary? We want you to read it all-out, like a crazy, wild, meshuga, nutso.'
"So I said: 'Well, why don't you let me read it that way now and if I don't do well, don't have me back?'
"That's a revolutionary statement. He said: 'All right, we'll try it'.
"So I read it that way, like a meshuga, and they laughed. Jim said: 'Read it just like that when you come back with Mary.'
"A week to 10 days later, I came back and read with Mary. After I had the job, they told me that Mary said at the time: 'Are you sure?' and they said: 'That's your Lou Grant.'"
A no nonsense old style newsman, Lou Grant won prove an instant hit with audiences as his irascible nature gradually revealed a much warmer heart over seven seasons.
The show would also further the careers of Cloris Leachman and Valerie Harper.
While Asner knew as they embarked on the show the writing was good, he insisted he had no idea how popular it would become, winning 29 Primetime Emmys - a record that would eventually be broken by 'Frasier' in 2002.
Asner captured the Emmy for Outstanding Performance in a Supporting Role in a Comedy in 1971 for his work on the first series and again in 1972 and 1975, receiving nominations in the category in 1973, 1974, 1976 and 1977.
He also won Golden Globes for his performance in 1972 and 1976.
Now an established household name, he commanded attention when he appeared in TV movies like Walter Grauman's 'They Call It Murder' on NBC with Jim Hutton, Paul Wendkos' ABC thriller 'Haunts of the Very Rich' in 1972 with Lloyd Bridges and Cloris Leachman, the Joan Rivers penned ABC black comedy 'The Girl Most Likely To' in 1973 with Stockard Channing, Richard T Heffron's true crime drama 'Death Scream' with Art Carney and Leachman and Randal Kleiser's 1977 thriller 'The Gathering' with Maureen Stapleton, in which he played a father who has walked out on his family but later learns he has a terminal illness.
On the big screen, Gordon Douglas directed him in the 1970 'In the Heat of the Night' sequel, 'They Call Me Mister Tibbs' with Sidney Poitier and Martin Landau in another shady role.
Douglas and Paul Bogart directed him, James Garner and Lou Gossett in the 1971 comedy western 'The Skin Game' in which he played a slave owner.
In Jim Westman's 1974 drama 'The Wrestler,' Asner was a wrestling promoter but the film met with indifferent reviews.
There was a guest appearance as Lou Grant in two episodes in 1974 of 'Rhoda,' - Valerie Harper's hit CBS sitcom spin-off from 'The Mary Tyler Moore Show'.
He also popped up as a guest star on NBC's 'Police Story, and CBS's 'Hawaii-Five-O' and a major role in ABC's miniseries 'Rich Man, Poor Man' in 1976 with Nick Nolte, Peter Strauss and Gloria Grahame for which he won an Outstanding Lead Actor for a Single Performance in a Comedy or Drama Emmy and a Golden Globe for Best Supporting Actor.
Asner won another Emmy for Outstanding Single Performance by a Supporting Actor in a Comedy or Drama series for his performance as a slave ship captain in ABC's epic miniseries of Alex Hailey's 'Roots'.
There was box office success with Vincent McEveety's 1976 family comedy movie 'Gus' with Don Knotts which saw him play the owner of an American Football team who discover a football loving donkey.
When 'The Mary Tyler Moore Show' came to an end, Lou Grant got his own show on CBS named after him in 1977.
However instead of being a sitcom, it was a single camera, newsroom drama as his character landed a job as the City Editor of the Los Angeles Tribune after being fired from his job in the TV station in Minneapolis.
But while it was a critical and commercial success, winning him more Emmys for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series in 1978 and 1980 and nominations for the other three seasons as well as a Golden Globe, Asner would later admit he missed acting in front of a studio audience.
"The effect of the laugh at the right moment was enormously restorative and energising," he told the Hollywood Reporter.
"You don't have that with an hour show. You just don't.. There's nothing more fun than hearing rip-roaring laughter from an audience."
There was a critically lambasted performance as a wealthy Irish American who contemplates an extramarital affair with a pianist in Glenn Jordan's 1979 CBS TV movie 'The Family Man' with Meredith Baxter Birney.
With his increased name recognition and star power in television, Asner began to assert himself politically.
During the Eighties, he played a prominent role in asserting the rights of actors and was a leading voice during the 1980 Screen Actors Guild strike which resulted in a boycott of the Emmys, with only one of the 52 nominated actors - Powers Boothe - attending the event.
In 1981, he also narrated CBS's well received 1981 Hallmark Hall of Fame TV movie 'The Marva Collins Story' with Cicely Tyson and Morgan Freeman.
That year, he appeared as a precinct captain in Daniel Petrie's gritty police officer movie 'Fort Apache, The Bronx' with Paul Newman, Rachel Ticotin, Pam Grier, Ken Wahl and Danny Aiello.
Despite mixed reviews and a backlash from some community leaders in the Bronx about how it depicted their area, the film performed well at the box office.
Asner was elected president of the Screen Actors Guild in 1981 and would serve two terms - a union whose past presidents included James Cagney, Howard Keel, Ronald Reagan and Charlton Heston.
However he used his platform as SAG president to campaign against President Reagan's administration's involvement in Central America.
When CBS cancelled Lou Grant in 1982 despite strong ratings, Asner clashed with the network, claiming it was as a result of his left wing political views.
He blamed CBS's top executive William J Paley and admitted its cancellation was painful for him to bear.
"It put me back on the streets again," he recalled.
"And it showed that you were never too big."
Undeterred, he would continue to champion left of centre causes for the rest of his life, endorsing the campaign for single payer healthcare in California and the campaign to overturn the decision to put the political activist and journalist Mumia Abu-Jamal on Death Row for the murder of Philadelphia police officer Daniel Faulkner in 1982.
A former member of the Democratic Socialists Organising Committee, Asner also lent his support to several not for profit organisations like The Survivor Mitzvah Project which provided emergency aid to survivors of the Nazi Holocaust in eastern Europe, serving on the Entertainment Board of Directors.
A member of the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund, he was an advocate for free speech for comic book creators prosecuted for content.
Asner was an advisor for the Rosenberg Fund for Children, a fund for the sons and daughters of political activists in memory of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg who were convicted and executed for spying for the Soviet Union.
In addition to his support for the Defenders of Wildlife and Humane Borders which provides water stations for undocumented immigrants in the Arizona and California desert along the border with Mexico, he sat on the board of Exceptional Minds, a school and animation studio for young adults on the autism spectrum.
Asner had a deep involvement in campaigning on autism issues, having been a parent and grandparent of a child with autism.
He also served on the board of Aspiritech which trains high functioning people with autism for a career in testing software and quality assure services for other companies.
The organisation Autism Speaks also benefitted from his advocacy.
Asner courted controversy in 2004 when he supported a demand by the conspiracy theory organisation 9/11 Truth for a fresh investigation into aspects of the terror attacks in New York, Washington DC and on United 93.
Seven years later, he hosted an event in LA for the Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth.
In 2008, he would support Barack Obama's successful bid for the US Presidency.
Returning to his work,v in 1982 Asner had the lead role in William Bartman's comedy drama movie 'O'Hara's Wife' in which Jodie Foster played his daughter.
The film about a hard working lawyer whose wife's ghost visits him after her death to persuade him to focus more on his family barely made a ripple at the box office.
Sidney Lumet directed him a year later in 'Daniel,' his big screen adaptation of an EL Doctorow novel with Timothy Hutton, Ellen Barkin, Mandy Patinkin and Lindsay Crouse.
However the film failed to ignite the box office after lukewarm reviews
Bruised by the cancellation of 'Lou Grant', Asner returned to a sitcom in 1985, starring opposite Eileen Brennan in the short-lived ABC garment industry comedy 'Off the Rack' which was axed after seven episodes.
He joined Peter Strauss, Mary Steenburgen, Sean Young and John Heard in Dennis Potter's 1985 BBC adaptation of F Scott Fitzgerald's 'Tender is the Night' as Devereux Warren - the father of Steenburgen's character Nicole who sexually abused her as a child.
There would be appearances in Showtime's 'Tall Tales and Legends' and NBC's fantasy drama 'Highway to Heaven' and a 1986 NBC TV movie about bulimia 'Kate's Secret' with Meredith Baxter Birney and Shari Belafonte before he landed the part in 1987 of the principal in an inner city school in the NBC drama series 'The Bronx Zoo' with Kathleen Beller and Mykelti Williamson which lasted only two seasons.
There was a role as a Reverend in ABC's 1987 crack cocaine TV movie 'Cracked Up' and as a grandfather in a 1988 Disney Channel TV movie 'A Friendship in Vienna' set in Austria during the rise of Adolf Hitler with Jenny Lewis and Stephen Macht.
In Paul Mazursky's romcom 'Moon Over Parador' with Richard Dreyfuss, Sonia Braga and Raul Julia in 1988, Asner appeared as himself but the movie stuttered at the box office after mixed reviews.
In 1990, he played Jeffrey Archer's Polish immigrant Harvey Metcalfe in the BBC's miniseries 'Not A Penny More, Not A Penny Less' with Ed Begley Jr, Maryam D'Abo and Jenny Agutter.
There was a regular voice role from 1990 to 1996 as the villainous Hoggish Greedly in TBS's environmentalist animated series 'Captain Planet and the Planeteers' which also featured the vocal talent of Whoopi Goldberg.
He joined the cast of 'The Trials of Rosie O'Neill' - Sharon Gless's post 'Cagney and Lacey' vehicle for CBS - in its second season in 1991 as a cranky retired cop hired by her character's law firm and earned an Emmy nomination for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Drama Series.
In 1991, there was a significant role as a private eye involved in the plot to kill President John F Kennedy in Oliver Stone's dazzling, star studded, conspiracy thriller 'JFK' with Kevin Costner, Tommy Lee Jones, Sissy Spacek, Joe Pesci and Gary Oldman in which his character drunkenly assaulted Jack Lemmon's.
There was another brief stab at a sitcom during the first season of CBS's 1992 political satire 'Hearts Afire' with John Ritter, Markie Post and Billy Bob Thornton.
On ABC's sitcom 'Thunder Alley,' he starred as a retired race car driver with Diane Venora, who played his daughter and Haley Joel Osment.
The show lasted just two seasons and was axed after it was moved to a prime sitcom slot on a Wednesday and struggled in the ratings during the 1994-95 season.
Asner provided the voice of Jacob Marley in Stan Phillips' 1997 straight to DVD aminated release of Charles Dickens' 'A Christmas Carol' with Tim Curry, Whoopi Goldberg and Michael York.
In 1998, there was another brief stint on TV as an advertising agency's creative director in Tom Selleck's CBS sitcom vehicle 'The Closer' which lasted only 10 episodes.
Mikael Solomon directed him in the 1998 movie 'Hard Rain' in which he played a truck driver alongside Morgan Freeman, Christian Slater, Randy Quaid and Minnie Driver.
A flop at the box office, the film polarised critics.
English director Gary Siynor cast him in a supporting role in the moderately successful 1999 romcom 'The Bachelor' with Chris O'Donnell, Renée Zellweger, Mariah Carey, James Cromwell, Brooke Shields, Sarah Silverman, Peter Ustinov and Hal Holbrook.
Asner spent much of the 1990s, though, voicing animated TV series roles in shows like Hanna Barbera's 'Fish Police' for CBS, Disney's 'Dinosaurs' and 'Gargoyles' for ABC, playing J Jonah Jameson in Fox Kids' 'Spiderman,' the USA Network's adult animated show 'Duckman,' WB's superhero show 'Freakazoid!,' comedian Louie Anderson's Fox Kids' animated comedy 'Life with Louie,' the same channel's 'Batman: The Animated Series' as Roland Daggett and 'Animaniacs,' WB Kids' 'Superman: the Animated Series' in which he played Granny Goodness, UPN Kids''Jumanji' and Warner Bros' syndicated 'The New Adventures of Zorro' and a 1999 episode of Fox's 'The Simpsons' in which he played a newspaper editor who hires Homer.
There were guest roles too in shows like NBC's hit sitcom 'Mad About You' where he appeared in 1996 in three episodes, Showtime's Western anthology 'Dead Man's Gun,' ABC's legal drama 'The Practice,' Channel 4 and Showtimes' 'More Tales from the City' in which he played an Associated Press journalist and Fox's sci-fi series 'The X Files'.
He also got to reprise the role of Lou Grant in the season opener of ABC's 'Roseanne' in which Roseanne Barr's character is watching an old episode of 'The Mary Tyler Moore Show'.
Asner was engaged to producer Cindy Gilmore in 1991 and married her seven years later.
The marriage lasted nine years, with her filing a legal separation and eventually securing a divorce in 2015.
In the 2000s, Asner notched up guest appearances in the CBS Roma Downey fantasy vehicle 'Touched By An Angel,' HBO's sitcoms 'Arliss' with Robert Wuhl and 'Curb Your Enthusiasm' with Larry David, ABC's sitcom 'Dharma and Greg,' and NBC's 'ER' and 'Andy Barker, PI,' the USA Network's 'The Dead Zone' and animated shows like the Cartoon Network's 'Johnny Bravo' and 'Justice League Unlimited,' UPN's 'Toy Story' spin-off 'Buzz Lightyear of Star Command,' Kids WB's 'Max Steel,' Fox's 'Family Guy' and 'King of the Hill,' MTV's 'Spiderman: The New Animated Series' and PBS's 'Word Girl'.
On the movie screen, there was another role as a police chief in Luke Greenfield's critically panned but commercially successful 2001 comedy 'The Animal' with Rob Schneider, John C McGinley and Colleen Haskell.
The plum role of Santa Claus came his way in Jon Favreau's classic Christmas comedy 'Elf' with Will Ferrell, Zooey Deschanel, Mary Steenburgen and James Caan.
In 2004, he teamed with Jean Smart and John Goodman for the Tulsa CBS sitcom 'Centre of the Universe' whose run lasted only 10 episodes.
He played the owner of a TV network in 2006 in six episodes of Aaron Sorkin's 'Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip' with Matthew Perry and Bradley Whitford.
There was also a role as Sharon Lawrence's father who was suffering from dementia in the Canadian police drama 'The Line' on The Movie Channel
He picked up his 15th Emmy nomination in the Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Miniseries or TV movie in 2007 for his performance in Stephen Bridgewater's hit TV movie for his performance in The Hallmark Channel's 'The Christmas Card' with Alice Evans.
Two years later, there was 16th career nomination for Outstanding Guest Actor in a Drama Series for his performance in an episode of CBS's 'CSI: NY'.
In 2009, Asner was to land the role of a grumpy old widower who transports his house and a boy scout to the Amazon with balloons in Pete Docter's touching Disney Pixar classic feature 'Up'.
Hugely successful with audiences and critics, it introduced him to a whole new generation.
Asner was proud of both 'Elf' and 'Up'.
"I love them both," he told the Hollywood Reporter in his final interview.
"Will Ferrell is a genius and the funniest man I came across since Ted Knight.
"Up was geniusly written "
He would reprise the role of Carl Fredricksen twice in the 2009 Pixar short 'Dug's Special Mission' and in Disney+'s 2021 spin-off 'Dug Days'.
The 2010s saw him appear in Comedy Central's.'The Sarah Silverman Show,' Fox's animated comedies 'American Dad' and 'The Cleveland Show,' its crime procedural 'Bones,' ABC's sitcom 'The Middle,' TV Land's 'Hot in Cleveland,' CBS's 'Hawaii-Five-O' reboot, its top rated dramas 'The Good Wife' and 'Criminal Minds' and its sitcom 'Mom,' the channel's action adventure series 'MacGyver,' NBC's 'Law and Order: Special Victims Unit,' TBS's 'Men at Work,' Nickelodeon's 'SpongeBob Squarepants' and Netflix's 'Dead to Me'
In 2016, he narrated Nicole Zwiren's documentary 'Behind the Fear' which tackled AIDS/HIV denialism and was the culmination of five years hard work.
A year later, his son Matthew and daughter-in-law Navah Paskowitz Asner established the Ed Asner Family Center which provides families with members who have special needs with counselling services, arts programs, support networks and residential camps.
There was another Christmas movie in 2017, playing a toy company chief in Tom DeNucci's comedy 'Saving Christmas' with Brooke Langton which critics hated and audiences ignored.
Stephen Noyer directed him, Rhys Ifans, Cynthia Nixon, Melissa Leo and Anna Paquin in the little seen but warmly received 2018 indie movie 'The Parting Glass'.
In 2020, there were roles at the age of 89 and 90 in ABC's popular sitcom 'Modern Family,' CBS's cop drama 'Blue Bloods,' the USA Network's 'Briarpatch' with Rosario Dawson and Apple TV+'s adult animated comedy 'Central Park'.
This year he appeared in the Cartoon Network's 'Teen Titans Go' and Fox's Presidential puppet show 'Let's Be Real,"
Right up to the end, Asner continued to work and refused to let the Covid-19 pandemic diminish his appetite for film and television.
"My eyesight is not the greatest and my hearing is not the greatest, so I don't go out much anyway," he admitted.
"I sit here most of the time, bored as hell, not sure which way to turn
"I don't know. I'm waiting for the next gig and they're slower coming in now, I can tell you."
His slate of TV and movie roles awaiting release appears to undermine that claim as he remained much in demand up until his death
Asner filmed roles in the shows 'The Premise,' 'The Last Saturday Night,' 'Saigon Gold' and 'In Security' as well as parts in two TV movies 'Scarlett' and 'Rainbow Reef'.
On the big screen, he shot a thriller 'Awaken' with the director Don E Fauntleroy, Robin Christian's comedy 'A Fargo Christmas Story,' Mark David's thriller 'Blood' and Charles Dennis' 'Deadly Draw' with Gail O'Grady - all of which are awaiting posthumous release.
He was living in the LA neighbourhood of Tarzana when he passed away at the age of 91.
But even in his final interview, Asner could not avoid political commentary, observing the evacuation of Kabul had been a terrible setback for Joe Biden's Presidency.
He argued: "He is certainly not to blame - he's only been in office six months for God's sake!
"But I'm sure he knows how to buckle under and take it.
"I think he's done a great job with the Welfare Bill and I think that we will be a bigger and better country when he comes to the end of his Presidency."
Few actors were as prolific or as outspoken as Ed Asner.
But his desire to work right to the end and to also make a difference away from the set made him the role model for many in his profession.
Ed Asner was simply a class act.
(Ed Asner passed away at the age of 91 on August 29, 2021)
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