Ed Asner

Born on November 15, 1929, in Kansas City, Missouri, to Orthodox Jewish immigrant parents, Ed Asner attended the University of Chicago and served with the U.S. Army Signal Corps in Europe before launching his stage career with Chicago's Playwrights Theatre Club and the Second City improvisational troupe. In 1970, Asner was cast as the gruff but lovable television news director Lou Grant in 'The Mary Tyler Moore Show'. His iconic line in the pilot episode—'You've got spunk! I hate spunk!'—became an indelible piece of American television lore. In a rare feat in television history, when the comedy ended in 1977, Asner transitioned the same character into the hard-hitting hour-long dramatic journalism series 'Lou Grant' (1977–1982), winning Primetime Emmy Awards for playing the same character in both a comedy and a drama. Across his career, Asner won seven Primetime Emmy Awards (more than any other male actor in history) and was nominated twenty times, also winning for his roles in the landmark miniseries 'Rich Man, Poor Man' (1976) and 'Roots' (1977). As President of the Screen Actors Guild from 1981 to 1985, Asner was a fiery labor leader, fighting for union contracts, strike rights, and human rights in Central America. In 2009, a new generation fell in love with Asner when he voiced elderly widower Carl Fredricksen in Pixar's Oscar-winning animated masterpiece 'Up', and he delighted holiday audiences as Santa Claus in 'Elf' (2003). In his later years, he founded the Ed Asner Family Center for neurodivergent individuals. He died on August 29, 2021, at age 91.