Charles Grodin
Charles Grodin is an American actor, comedian, author, and former television talk show host. Grodin began his acting career in the 1960s appearing in TV serials including The Virginian. He had a small part as an obstetrician in Roman Polanski's Rosemary's Baby in 1968. In the 1970s he moved into film acting, including playing the lead in Elaine May's The Heartbreak Kid and supporting roles in Mike Nichols' Catch-22 and Warren Beatty's Heaven Can Wait. He became a familiar face as a supporting actor in many Hollywood comedies of the era, including Real Life, Seems Like Old Times, Ishtar, and Dave. Grodin co-starred alongside Robert De Niro in the action comedy Midnight Run, and in the family film Beethoven. He made frequent appearances on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson and Late Night with David Letterman.
In the mid-1990s, Grodin retired from acting, and wrote several autobiographies, and became a talk show host on CNBC and in 2000 a political commentator for 60 Minutes II. He returned to acting with a handful of roles in the mid-2010s and appeared in a recurring role as a philosophical doctor in Louis C.K.'s FX show Louie and Noah Baumbach's film While We're Young.
Grodin has won several awards, including Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Writing for a Variety Special in 1978 for the Paul Simon Special alongside Chevy Chase, Lorne Michaels, Paul Simon, and Lily Tomlin. He was also nominated Golden Globe Award for Best Actor – Motion Picture Musical or Comedy for The Heartbreak Kid in 1972. He won Best Actor at the 1988 Valladolid International Film Festival for Midnight Run, and the American Comedy Award for Funniest Supporting Actor in a Motion Picture for his performance in Dave in 1993.
Early life
Grodin was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, to Orthodox Jewish parents, Lena, who worked in the family store and volunteered for disabled veterans, and Theodore I. Grodin, who sold wholesale supplies. His maternal grandfather was an immigrant from Russia who "came from a long line of rabbis" and moved to Chesapeake at the turn of the 20th century. Grodin has an older brother, Jack.Grodin attended the University of Miami but left without graduating to pursue acting. He studied acting at HB Studio in New York City under Uta Hagen.
Career
1950s/1960s Early career
Grodin's film debut was an uncredited bit part in Disney's 1954 film 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. A student of Lee Strasberg and Uta Hagen, he made his Broadway debut in a production of Tchin-Tchin, opposite Anthony Quinn. In 1965, he became an assistant to director Gene Saks and appeared on several television series including The Virginian.Grodin had a small but pivotal part playing an obstetrician in the 1968 horror film, Rosemary's Baby. In 1964, he played Matt Stevens on the ABC soap opera the Young Marrieds. During the late 1960s, he also co-wrote and directed Hooray! It's a Glorious Day...and All That, a Broadway play, and directed Lovers and Other Strangers and Thieves, also on Broadway. He also directed Simon and Garfunkel's television special Songs of America in 1969. However, he turned down the part of Benjamin Braddock in The Graduate because of the low salary offered by producer Lawrence Turman, although Turman assured him that the part would make him a star, as it ultimately did for Dustin Hoffman.
1970s/1980s film work
After a supporting role in the 1970 comedy film Catch-22, Grodin gained recognition as a comedy actor when he played the lead role in the 1972 film The Heartbreak Kid. Grodin subsequently appeared in several films during the decade, including 11 Harrowhouse in 1974, the 1976 version of King Kong and the hit 1978 comedy Heaven Can Wait. During the 1970s, he also frequently appeared on Broadway and was involved in producing several plays.In 1981, he landed in a role in The Great Muppet Caper playing Nicky Holiday, a jewel thief who falls in love with Miss Piggy. He also appeared that same year opposite Lily Tomlin in The Incredible Shrinking Woman. His 1980s roles included Neil Simon's Seems Like Old Times and 1988's well-reviewed comedy Midnight Run, a buddy movie co-starring Robert De Niro. Grodin also appeared in the 1986 CBS mini-series sendup Fresno, playing the evil son of a raisin matriarch.
His Hollywood film roles of the 1980s usually saw him cast as uptight, bland and world-weary white collar professionals, such as a psychiatrist having a nervous breakdown, a health conscious accountant, an ineffectual advertising executive, and a lonely, socially awkward nerd. He was cast against this type as a scheming CIA agent in Ishtar.
Commenting on his work with regard to Ishtar, Hal Hinson in The Washington Post observed: "Grodin has a one-of-a-kind quality on the screen, a sort of inspired spinelessness. And with his cat-burglar rhythms – he seems to play all his scenes as if someone were asleep in the next room – he's become a very sly scene-stealer." Sandra Brennan at Rovi noted that: "Whereas many funnymen have been popular for their ability to overreact and mug their way around everyday obstacles, Grodin belonged, from the beginning, to the Bob Newhart school of wry comedy that values understatement and subtlety."
Aside from his film work, he was a frequent presence on television. In 1977, Grodin hosted an episode of the NBC sketch show Saturday Night Live, where the entire episode revolved around his forgetting that the show was live, and he proceeded to wreck sketches because of his failure to prepare accordingly. His many talk show appearances from the 1970s to the present have often included confrontational and mock angry segments. At one time Johnny Carson "banned" him from The Tonight Show appearances after taking offense at things Grodin had said. The NBC network would receive angry letters from viewers who didn't understand the joke, that he was playing a persona, trying to be as different from typical talk show guests as possible. His appearances on Late Night With David Letterman would sometimes erupt into shouting and name-calling, but Letterman always enjoyed Grodin's segments.
1990s family films
Grodin's career took a turn in 1992, when he played the nervous family man George Newton in the kids' comedy Beethoven, opposite Bonnie Hunt. The film was a box-office hit, and he reprised the role in the 1993 sequel, Beethoven's 2nd. Also in 1993, Grodin played the role of Harrison Winslow in the movie Hearts and Souls. After a supporting role in the acclaimed Ivan Reitman comedy Dave, Grodin took a lead role in It Runs in the Family, which received a limited theatrical release in 1994. That same year also saw the much-delayed release of Clifford, in which Grodin portrayed the frustrated uncle opposite Martin Short's title role. After a 12-year-long hiatus from film, Grodin returned to acting in the Zach Braff comedy The Ex.2010s career resurgence
In the 2010's Grodin made more frequent acting appearances, guest starring on television shows such as and The Michael J. Fox Show. Grodin had several supporting roles in films, including Barry Levinson's The Humbling and Noah Baumbach's While We're Young.In 2015, Grodin was cast in a recurring role in Louis C.K.'s acclaimed FX show Louie as Dr. Bigelow, C.K.'s philosophical doctor and mentor in Season 4 and 5. In an interview with Deadline, Grodin talked about his relationship with C.K. stating, "I find him to be the single most talented person that I’ve ever worked with, he’s a wonderful director, writer, and actor".