Charles Grodin, the character actor who starred in popular films like The Heartbreak Kid, Heaven Can Wait, and Ishtar, has died at 86 at his home in Wilton, Connecticut. His son, Nicholas, told the New York Times that the cause of death was bone marrow cancer.
Grodin made a name for himself for his versatile, often deadpan comedic performances on stage and screen. Born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Grodin dropped out of University of Miami to pursue acting, studying under renowned acting coach Uta Hagen in the ’50s. Grodin received his big break when he landed a part in Broadway revival of Tchin-Tchin in 1963 starring Anthony Quinn and Margaret Leighton, delivering a performance theater critic Walter Kerr called “impeccable.” (“It took a trip to the dictionary to understand he meant more than clean,” Grodin wrote years later.) He would go on to build his theater career, directing Broadway productions of plays Love and Strangers and Thieves on Broadway and starring opposite Ellen Burstyn in the two-hander Same Time, Next Year in 1975.
Meanwhile, Grodin’s career as a screen actor was taking off. After appearing in Mike Nichols’s 1970 film Catch-22 and turning down the role of Benjamin Braddock in Nichols’s classic *The Graduate—*that part jump started Dustin Hoffman‘s career—Grodin was cast in The Heartbreak Kid, directed by Nichols’s longtime comedy partner, Elaine May. His performance as Lenny Cantrow, a narcissistic sporting goods salesman who grows weary of his new wife, would go on to earn a Golden Globe nomination for best actor in a musical or comedy. Grodin’s career would be marked by portraying business men and fathers often in supporting roles, appearing in films like Beethoven, Midnight Run, and Dave, for which he received the American comedy award for funniest supporting actor in a motion picture in 1993.
While Grodin never won a major award for acting, he was celebrated as a writer, winning an Emmy alongside Chevy Chase, Lorne Michaels, Lily Tomlin, and Paul Simon for writing Simon’s television special in 1977. Grodin was also a go-to late night television guest, appearing 36 times on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson and 17 times on Late Night With David Letterman. More recently, Grodin played Dr. Bigelow on the FX comedy Louie and the philanthropist and defrauded investor Carl J. Shapiro in the ABC miniseries Madoff in 2016.
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