John Mahoney
Charles John Mahoney was an English-American actor. He first became known for his roles in such films as Moonstruck, Eight Men Out, Say Anything..., Barton Fink, and The Hudsucker Proxy. He was best known for playing Martin Crane in the American sitcom Frasier, which aired on NBC from 1993 to 2004. He also worked as a voice actor, and was passionate about his stage work on Broadway and in Chicago theatre. He won a Tony Award for Best Featured Actor in a Play in 1986 for his performance in The House of Blue Leaves.
Early life
Charles John Mahoney was born in the Bispham area of Blackpool on 20 June 1940, the seventh of eight children. His father, Reg, was a baker who played classical piano, and his mother, Margaret, was a housewife who loved reading. His paternal grandfather was Irish. The family had been evacuated to Blackpool from their home city of Manchester when it was heavily bombed during the Second World War. Mahoney started school at St Joseph's College. After the war, the family moved back to Manchester, where Mahoney grew up in the suburb of Withington and discovered acting at the Stretford Children's Theatre. His parents' marriage was not happy. They would not speak to each other for long periods of time; when they did, it often led to heated arguments. The family situation, combined with the war, fuelled Mahoney's interest in acting and he vowed to leave Manchester.Mahoney moved to the United States aged 18 in March 1959, when his older sister Vera agreed to sponsor him. He studied at Quincy University before joining the United States Army. After graduating from Quincy, he lived in Macomb, Illinois, and earned his Master's degree in English from Western Illinois University, where he went on to teach English in the late 1960's before settling in Forest Park, Illinois, and later in Oak Park, Illinois. He became a U.S. citizen in 1971 and served as editor of a medical journal through much of the 1970s.
Career
Early work
Dissatisfied with his career, Mahoney took acting classes at St. Nicholas Theatre, which inspired him to resign from his day job and pursue acting full-time. After a stage production in Chicago in 1977, John Malkovich encouraged him to join the Steppenwolf Theatre. He did so and went on to win the Clarence Derwent Award as Most Promising Male Newcomer. Gary Sinise said in an interview for Bomb Magazine that Lyle Kessler's play Orphans "kicked John Mahoney, Kevin Anderson and Terry Kinney off into the movie business" after their Steppenwolf performance of the play for which he won the Derwent Award and the Theatre World Award. Mahoney won Broadway's Tony Award for Best Featured Actor in a Play for his performance in John Guare's The House of Blue Leaves.Mahoney's first major film roles were in the 1987 Barry Levinson film Tin Men and Suspect, directed by Peter Yates, which was a courtroom drama/mystery starring Cher, Dennis Quaid, and Liam Neeson. He went on to have prominent roles in a number of acclaimed films throughout the late 1980s and 1990s, including Moonstruck, Eight Men Out, Say Anything..., In the Line of Fire, Reality Bites, and The American President. He appeared in two Coen brothers films, Barton Fink and The Hudsucker Proxy.
Mahoney also played a pivotal gay role in Greg Berlanti's 2000 GLAAD-Award winning film .
''Frasier''
Mahoney appeared in Frasier from its debut in 1993 until the final episode in 2004; Mahoney received two Emmy nominations and two Golden Globe nominations for the role of Martin Crane, the father of Frasier Crane and Niles Crane. NBC executives held Mahoney in such high esteem that Warren Littlefield declared he was pre-approved when the Frasier creative team suggested casting him as the father. Prior to appearing on the series, Mahoney had appeared in an episode of Cheers – from which Frasier was a spinoff – as Sy Flembeck, an inept jingle writer who has a brief conversation with Frasier. Mahoney also appeared as a priest in Becker, which starred Cheers star Ted Danson.Voice acting
Mahoney's first voice job was in W. B. Yeats's "The Words upon the Window-Pane" for the award-winning National Radio Theater of Chicago. He provided the voices for several characters in Antz, Preston Whitmore in ' and ', General Rogard in The Iron Giant, and Papi in Kronk's New Groove. In 2007, Mahoney provided the voice of Dr. Robert Terwilliger, Sr. in The Simpsons episode "Funeral for a Fiend." This reunited him with his Frasier co-stars Kelsey Grammer and David Hyde Pierce.Post-''Frasier''
Mahoney co-starred as the Old Man in the Broadway revival of Prelude to a Kiss at the American Airlines Theater in a limited-run engagement running from previews on February 17, 2007, through to April 29, 2007. He appeared as an elderly drag queen in the ER season 13 episode "Somebody to Love," and co-starred with Steve Carell as the father of Carell's character in Dan in Real Life. In March 2008, he opened in the world premiere of Better Late at the Northlight Theatre. He was also the narrator for Midwest Airlines commercials. Mahoney also made two appearances on USA's Burn Notice in the second and third season finales. His character, referred to only as "Management," is a senior intelligence agency official who is the apparent main mover of the conspiracy which blacklisted Michael Westen.Mahoney joined the cast of In Treatment for the series' second season as a frenetic CEO who is overwhelmed by his personal and professional responsibilities and experiences chronic physical anxiety attacks. In 2010, he made a guest appearance on $#@! My Dad Says as homophobic retired naval officer Lt. Commander Wally Durham.
Beginning in April 2011, Mahoney began rehearsing The Outgoing Tide, a new play by Bruce Graham at Northlight Theatre in Skokie, Illinois. The play also stars fellow Chicago actors Rondi Reed and Thom Cox. In 2011, he had two guest appearances on Hot in Cleveland as Roy, a waiter and a love interest for Betty White's character Elka. This reunited him with his Frasier co-star Jane Leeves, as well as Wendie Malick whose character he eventually married in Frasier and his co-star in the movie The American President. Mahoney was a featured ensemble cast member in The Birthday Party, playing in Chicago's Steppenwolf Theatre from January 24 to April 28, 2013. Mahoney portrayed his last role in the play The Rembrandt, from September to November 2017.
Despite the numerous successes throughout his career, Mahoney has maintained that his early work in Lyle Kessler's play Orphans has "affected people more than any other play I've ever done. I still get mail from it, I still get people stopping me on the street, and it's 20 years later."
Personal life
Along with David Hyde Pierce, Mahoney was godfather to Frasier co-star Jane Leeves' son Finn. Mahoney rarely spoke publicly about his private life, but in a 2002 article he revealed he had been in several relationships, although he had never married, citing his parents' unhappy marriage as something he feared he would repeat. He suffered from colon cancer in the mid-1980s.Mahoney lived in Oak Park, Illinois.