Ed Asner

Ed Asner was born in Cleveland, Ohio, to a Jewish family. He studied drama at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and began his professional acting career in the early 1960s, appearing in productions of plays like Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and A Streetcar Named Desire. In 1969, Asner was cast as Lou Grant on The Mary Tyler Moore Show, a role he reprised for the show's spin-off series Lou Grant. He won an Emmy Award for his performance on both series. Asner also appeared in a number of films throughout the 1970s and 1980s, including The Godfather, The Great Gatsby, and Reds. Asner returned to television in 2009, starring as the voice of Carl Fredricksen in Pixar's award-winning animated film, Up. He also appeared in the series Working Class, the first original sitcom on cable channel CMT. Asner died on August 29, 2021, at the age of 87.