Gus Ruelas/Reuters
Michael Lerner, the prolific character actor nominated for an Academy Award for his portrayal of a Louis B. Mayer proxy in Barton Fink, died on Saturday, in accordance with his household. He was 81.
Lerner’s demise was introduced on Instagram by his nephew, The Goldbergs actor Sam Lerner. “We misplaced a legend final night time,” Lerner wrote. “It’s laborious to place into phrases how good my uncle Michael was, and the way influential he was to me.”
“His tales all the time impressed me and made me fall in love with performing. He was the best, most assured, gifted man, and the truth that he was my blood will all the time make me really feel particular. Everybody that is aware of him is aware of how insane he was—in one of the best ways.”
“I’m so fortunate I received to spend a lot time with him, and we’re all fortunate we will proceed to look at his work for the remainder of time,” Lerner concluded. “RIP Michael, get pleasure from your limitless Cuban cigars, cozy chairs and countless film marathon.”
No additional particulars on Michael Lerner’s reason for demise have been shared.
The son of a junk vendor in Crimson Hook, Brooklyn, Lerner grew up into an aficionado of cigars and uncommon books who collected greater than 150 movie and tv credit over the course of his profession.
Preliminary plans to turn into an English professor have been thwarted after he started performing in faculty, and he accepted a Fulbright Scholarship to review on the London Academy of Music & Dramatic Artwork. In London, he shared an condo for a time with John Lennon and Yoko Ono, the place he appeared in considered one of Ono’s experimental quick movies.
He started working commonly in tv within the Seventies and Nineteen Eighties, placing in appearances on The Brady Bunch, M*A*S*H*, The Doris Day Present, The Odd Couple, The A-Staff, and Hill Avenue Blues.
Nevertheless it wasn’t till Joel and Ethan Coen solid him in 1991’s Barton Fink because the brash mega-producer Jack Lipnick that Lerner would really cement his title and legacy. “They mentioned the character was a Michael Lerner sort, however they didn’t have me are available till the final minute,” he mentioned in a 1999 interview with Cigar Aficionado.
“I got here in and fucking blew them away,” he continued. “I auditioned in character, speaking a mile a minute. Joel and Ethan Coen have been on the bottom, laughing and crying in hysterics, and I simply walked out of there. I got here in, I did the primary large speech and walked out.”
Lerner formed Lipnick round Mayer, the bombastic MGM Studios head. “I even discovered a pair of glasses in a junk store that have been an identical to those he wore,” Lerner mentioned on the time, in accordance with the Los Angeles Instances. “As quickly as I put them on, I felt like Mayer.”
Regardless of solely showing in three scenes, Lipnick earned Lerner an Oscar nod at that 12 months’s ceremony. He misplaced out to Jack Palance in Metropolis Slickers.
He later reunited with the Coens for a small function of their 2009 drama A Severe Man. All through the ’90s and into the 2000s, he continued working steadily in movie, amassing credit for films like Newsies, Clean Test, X-Males: Days of Future Previous, and Roland Emmerich’s Godzilla. He additionally grew to become a well-known face in early-aughts comedies, most notably within the 2003 vacation flick Elf, by which he performed James Caan’s ill-tempered colleague.
Lerner is survived by his nephew, Sam, and his brother, Ken.