Latest news with #Yulin
Boston Globe
14-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Boston Globe
Harris Yulin, actor who perpetually played the bad guy, dies at 87
'I'm not always the bad guy,' he told The New York Times in 2000. 'It just seems to be what I'm known for.' Advertisement He wasn't just any bad guy. One reviewer characterized him as 'an eloquent growler.' Another wrote that 'his whiskeyed voice sounds just like that of John Huston.' Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday. Enter Email Sign Up Honors followed. Mr. Yulin was nominated in 1996 for a prime time Emmy Award for playing a crime boss in the TV comedy series 'Frasier.' For his work in theater, he won the Lucille Lortel Award from the League of Off Broadway Theaters for his direction of Horton Foote's 'The Trip to Bountiful' in 2006. In the late 1990s he won Drama Desk nominations for acting on Broadway in 'The Diary of Anne Frank' and Arthur Miller's 'The Price.' Early in his career, in 1963, he was cast in 'Next Time I'll Sing for You,' starring James Earl Jones and Estelle Parsons at the off-Broadway Phoenix Theater. The play bombed, he recalled to the Times in 2000. Advertisement vYulin made his Broadway debut in 1980 starring in a revival of Lillian Hellman's 'Watch on the Rhine.' He also appeared in Broadway productions of Friedrich Dürrenmatt's 'The Visit' (1992) and Henrik Ibsen's 'Hedda Gabler' (2001). And his performance in 2010 as Willy Loman in Arthur Miller's 'Death of a Salesman,' at Dublin's Gate Theater, got rave reviews. Mr. Yulin's first major film was in the offbeat comedy 'End of the Road' (1970), as a fellow college teacher opposite Stacy Keach. He played Wyatt Earp in 'Doc' (1971); a corrupt Miami police detective in 'Scarface' (1983), alongside Al Pacino; an irate judge in 'Ghostbusters II' (1989); and a White House national security adviser in 'Clear and Present Danger' (1994), with Harrison Ford. Reviewing 'Doc' in 1971, Roger Ebert wrote that Mr. Yulin and Keach 'have such a quiet way of projecting the willingness to do violence that you realize, after a while, that most Western actors are overactors.' On television, beginning in the 1960s, Mr. Yulin appeared in shows like 'Ironside,' 'Kojak' and 'Little House on the Prairie.' In the following decades he took on roles in the 1985 miniseries 'Robert Kennedy and His Times' (playing McCarthy), 'Murphy Brown' and 'Buffy the Vampire Slayer.' More recently he was in 'The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt' and 'Ozark.' 'Mr. Yulin's characters are quintessentially weary of this world, worn out by its ugliness and many disappointments,' Tara Ariano and Adam Sternbergh wrote in the book 'Hey! It's That Guy!' (2005), a who's who of character actors. 'No one knows better than those characters all the ways in which humanity and its various institutions can be corrupted and destroyed -- primarily because Yulin's characters have been tasked with destroying them.' Advertisement Mr. Yulin was born Harris Bart Goldberg on Nov. 5, 1937, in Los Angeles. Abandoned as an infant on the steps of an orphanage, he was adopted when he was 4 months old by Dr. Isaac Goldberg, a dentist, and his wife, Sylvia. (Yulin was a surname in Goldberg's family in Russia; Mr. Yulin adopted it for professional reasons.) He attended the University of Southern California without graduating and served in the U.S. Army for a year. He then embarked on a short-lived career as an artist in Italy. 'I tried to be a painter for a while in Florence, and I was extremely bad at it,' he told the Times in 2000. In 1962, after trifling with architecture as well, he moved to Tel Aviv, Israel, where friends urged him to try directing and acting. He did. At some point, through one of his father's patients, he was introduced to Jeff Corey, an actor and drama coach. Mr. Yulin married actress Gwen Welles in 1975; she died in 1993. In 2005, he married Lowman. His stepdaughter, actress Claire Lucido, died in 2021 at 30. His wife is his only immediate survivor. In addition to acting and directing, Mr. Yulin taught at the Juilliard School and the Graduate School of the Arts at Columbia University. He acknowledged his stature in the acting world in an interview with The Irish Times in 2010. 'I'm not that high-profile,' he said. 'I just do the next thing that comes along.' By most accounts, he did it well. Advertisement In the lead role in the American premiere of Athol Fugard's 'A Lesson From Aloes' in 1980, at the Yale Repertory Theater, playing an Afrikaner and comrade of a Black revolutionary (James Earl Jones), Mr. Yulin delivered 'a beautifully modulated, contemplative performance,' Mel Gussow wrote in the Times. And in reviewing 'The Price' in 1999, the Times' Ben Brantley said that Mr. Yulin 'seems to have been destined to play' Walter Franz, the son of a businessman who went bankrupt after the 1929 Stock Market crashed. 'The actor's natural self-important stateliness works beautifully,' he wrote, 'and you're always aware of the friction between the smooth surface and the roughness of angry confusion beneath.' Mr. Yulin never stopped working. At his death he was preparing for a role in the television series 'American Classic,' with Kevin Kline and Laura Linney. Its director, Michael Hoffman, said of him in a statement after his death, 'His marriage of immense technique with an always fresh sense of discovery gave his work an immediacy and vitality and purity I've experienced nowhere else.' This article originally appeared in
American Military News
14-06-2025
- Entertainment
- American Military News
Harris Yulin, prolific actor known for ‘Scarface,' ‘Training Day' and ‘Frasier,' dies at 87
Harris Yulin, the veteran stage and screen actor whose career notably included roles in 'Scarface,' 'Training Day' and 'Ghostbusters II,' has died. He was 87. Yulin died Tuesday of cardiac arrest in New York, his manager Sue Leibman and his family confirmed in a statement to The Times on Thursday. He was 'part of the vanguard of a generation who cared passionately about the craft of acting — this deep, lifelong dedication led to extraordinary, resonant performances that were a gift to audiences, the actors he worked with, and the art of acting itself,' said the statement, which also remembered the Los Angeles native as an 'avid birder and lover of the sea.' Born Nov. 5, 1937, Yulin enjoyed a varied screen acting career that spanned multiple decades and spawned more than 100 credits, according to IMDb. In film he portrayed a corrupt Los Angeles official in cahoots with Denzel Washington's immoral narcotics officer in 'Training Day,' a dismissive judge who oversees the court case against the supernatural sleuths in 'Ghostbusters II,' and a detective interested in doing business with Al Pacino's Tony Montana in 'Scarface.' Yulin counted numerous TV series among his credits, including 'WIOU,' 'Buffy the Vampire Slayer,' '24,' 'Nikita' and 'Veep.' In the final decade of his life, he also appeared in Netflix series 'Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt' and 'Ozark.' In 1996 he earned a Primetime Emmy nomination for guest actor in a comedy for his appearance as crime boss Jerome Belasco in the hit NBC series 'Frasier.' Beyond TV and film, Yulin pursued a prolific career on stage with included Broadway productions of 'Hedda Gabler,' 'The Price,' 'The Visit,' and 'Watch on the Rhine' and off-Broadway shows of 'Hamlet,' 'Arts and Leisure' and 'Rain Dance.' Throughout his career, Yulin brought his talents to the Court Theater and Goodman Theater in Chicago, the Gate Theatre in Dublin and the Bay Street Theater in New York. Yulin was also a stage director who oversaw productions of several plays, including 'The Glass Menagerie,' 'The Trip to Bountiful,' 'This Lime Tree Bower,' 'Men's Lives' and 'The Man Who Came to Dinner.' Yule was also an instructor who taught at Juilliard, Columbia University and at HB Studio. He continued working on new projects up until his death, including the MGM+ series 'American Classic,' starring Kevin Kline, Laura Linney and Jon Tenney. Deadline reported that the series began production on the East Coast and Yulin was preparing to begin shooting his role this week. His role will be recast. Series co-creator and executive producer Michael Hoffman mourned Yulin in a statement:'[He] was very simply one of the greatest artists I have ever encountered.' Hoffman, who worked with Yulin on the 2005 film 'Game 6,' added: 'His marriage of immense technique with an always fresh sense of discovery, gave his work an immediacy and vitality and purity I've experienced nowhere else,' Hoffman said. 'And what he was as an actor, he was as a man, the grace, the humility, the generosity. All of us at 'American Classic' have been blessed by our experience with him. He will always remain the beating heart of our show.' Yulin is survived by his wife Kristen Lowman, son-in-law Ted Mineo, nephew Martin Crane and godchildren Marco and Lara Greenberg. He was preceded in death by his daughter Claire Lucido. A memorial will be held at a later date. ___ © 2025 Los Angeles Times. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
Los Angeles Times
12-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Los Angeles Times
Harris Yulin, prolific actor known for ‘Scarface,' ‘Training Day' and ‘Frasier,' dies at 87
Harris Yulin, the veteran stage and screen actor whose career notably included roles in 'Scarface,' 'Training Day' and 'Ghostbusters II,' has died. He was 87. Yulin died Tuesday of cardiac arrest in New York, his manager Sue Leibman and his family confirmed in a statement to The Times on Thursday. He was 'part of the vanguard of a generation who cared passionately about the craft of acting — this deep, lifelong dedication led to extraordinary, resonant performances that were a gift to audiences, the actors he worked with, and the art of acting itself,' said the statement, which also remembered the Los Angeles native as an 'avid birder and lover of the sea.' Born Nov. 5, 1937, Yulin enjoyed a varied screen acting career that spanned multiple decades and spawned more than 100 credits, according to IMDb. In film he portrayed a corrupt Los Angeles official in cahoots with Denzel Washington's immoral narcotics officer in 'Training Day,' a dismissive judge who oversees the court case against the supernatural sleuths in 'Ghostbusters II,' and a detective interested in doing business with Al Pacino's Tony Montana in 'Scarface.' Yulin counted numerous TV series among his credits, including 'WIOU,' 'Buffy the Vampire Slayer,' '24,' 'Nikita' and 'Veep.' In the final decade of his life, he also appeared in Netflix series 'Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt' and 'Ozark.' In 1996 he earned a Primetime Emmy nomination for guest actor in a comedy for his appearance as crime boss Jerome Belasco in the hit NBC series 'Frasier.' Beyond TV and film, Yulin pursued a prolific career on stage with included Broadway productions of 'Hedda Gabler,' 'The Price,' 'The Visit,' and 'Watch on the Rhine' and off-Broadway shows of 'Hamlet,' 'Arts and Leisure' and 'Rain Dance.' Throughout his career, Yulin brought his talents to the Court Theater and Goodman Theater in Chicago, the Gate Theatre in Dublin and the Bay Street Theater in New York. Yulin was also a stage director who oversaw productions of several plays, including 'The Glass Menagerie,' 'The Trip to Bountiful,' 'This Lime Tree Bower,' 'Men's Lives' and 'The Man Who Came to Dinner.' Yule was also an instructor who taught at Juilliard, Columbia University and at HB Studio. He continued working on new projects up until his death, including the MGM+ series 'American Classic,' starring Kevin Kline, Laura Linney and Jon Tenney. Deadline reported that the series began production on the East Coast and Yulin was preparing to begin shooting his role this week. His role will be recast. Series co-creator and executive producer Michael Hoffman mourned Yulin in a statement:'[He] was very simply one of the greatest artists I have ever encountered.' Hoffman, who worked with Yulin on the 2005 film 'Game 6,' added: 'His marriage of immense technique with an always fresh sense of discovery, gave his work an immediacy and vitality and purity I've experienced nowhere else,' Hoffman said. 'And what he was as an actor, he was as a man, the grace, the humility, the generosity. All of us at 'American Classic' have been blessed by our experience with him. He will always remain the beating heart of our show.' Yulin is survived by his wife Kristen Lowman, son-in-law Ted Mineo, nephew Martin Crane and godchildren Marco and Lara Greenberg. He was preceded in death by his daughter Claire Lucido. A memorial will be held at a later date.
Yahoo
12-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Harris Yulin, Actor in ‘Scarface,' ‘Training Day' and ‘Ozark,' Dies at 87
Harris Yulin, the ever-present Emmy-nominated actor who appeared in such films as Scarface, Clear and Present Danger and Training Day and on television in Frasier, Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt and Ozark, has died. He was 87. Yulin died Tuesday of cardiac arrest in New York City, his family and manager, Sue Leibman, announced. More from The Hollywood Reporter John Cusack, Nancy Sinatra, Ronnie Wood and More Celebs Pay Tribute to Brian Wilson Brian Wilson, Heart and Soul of The Beach Boys, Dies at 82 Chris Robinson, '12 O'Clock High,' 'General Hospital' and 'Bold and the Beautiful' Actor, Dies at 86 Although he never found a starring role that made him a household name, Yulin was a familiar face who worked constantly during a career that spanned more than 50 years. 'I'm not that high-profile,' he admitted in a 2010 interview with The Irish Times. 'I just do the next thing that comes along.' On Broadway, the character actor performed in 1980's Watch on the Rhine, 1992's The Visit, 1997's The Diary of Anne Frank, 1999's The Price and 2001's Hedda Gabler. He also helmed off-Broadway productions of Baba Goya in 1989, This Lime Tree Bower in 1999 and The Trip to Bountiful in 2005 as well as a 1970 production of Candida at Canada's Shaw Festival and a 1995 staging of Don Juan in Hell for London's Riverside Studios. Yulin stood out as the corrupt Miami detective who tries to extort money from Al Pacino's Tony Montana in Scarface (1983), as the manipulative national security adviser who matches wits with Harrison Ford's Jack Ryan in Clear and Present Danger (1994) and as the corrupt cop Rosselli in Antoine Fuqua's Training Day (2001). On the lighter side, he played the judge whose courtroom is decimated by spirits in Ghostbusters II (1989) and the goofy scientist who creates four versions of Michael Keaton's Doug Kinney in Multiplicity (1996). Yulin more recently appeared on two Netflix series as Orson, the father of David Cross' character, on Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt and as Buddy Dieker, an eccentric old man with a criminal past, on Ozark. Viewers might also recognize Yulin as Quentin Travers, head of the Watchers' Council, on Buffy the Vampire Slayer or as NSA director Roger Stanton on 24. He received his guest-star Emmy nomination in 1996 for playing a wiseguy with a girlfriend who presses Dr. Crane (Kelsey Grammer) for help on Frasier. Harris Yulin was born in Los Angeles on Nov. 5, 1937. He was abandoned as an infant and left on the steps of an orphanage. Yulin was adopted when he was 4 months old and raised in a Jewish household by a Russian family who gave him his last name. He said the 'life-changing' inspiration to become an actor came during his bar mitzvah. 'I enjoyed it so much,' Yulin said. 'Most of my friends had said that they didn't enjoy it, that it was a horrible thing to have to be up there before all those people, saying whatever they were saying, and I found the opposite to be so.' Yulin attended UCLA to study acting before heading to New York to hopefully establish a career in the theater. He made it to the stage in 1963 opposite James Earl Jones and Estelle Parsons in the James Saunders play Next Time I'll Sing to You, then appeared in Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream in 1964, Richard III in 1966 and King John in 1967. In 1970, Yulin debuted on the big screen opposite Stacy Keach in the offbeat comedy/drama End of the Road. The following year, he earned accolades for playing Wyatt Earp in the revisionist Western Doc alongside Keach as Doc Holliday. 'Its greatest strength is in the acting,' Roger Ebert wrote in his 1971 review of the film. 'Stacy Keach and Harris Yulin … have such a quiet way of projecting the willingness to do violence that you realize, after a while, that most Western actors are overactors.' 'There's a kind of private club of actors who have conspired to make Westerns: John Wayne, of course, and Lancaster, Eastwood, Douglas, Widmark, Mitchum and the rest. But they've made so many, many Westerns with each other, in different combinations, that they've established a kind of acting tone that you expect in ALL Westerns. Keach and Yulin are outside the club, are new to the Western and create Doc Holliday and Wyatt Earp out of new cloth.' Yulin later portrayed J. Edgar Hoover in the 1974 CBS telefilm The F.B.I. Story: The FBI Versus Alvin Karpis, Public Enemy Number One and Sen. Joseph McCarthy in the 1985 CBS miniseries Robert Kennedy and His Times. And on the Steve Allen PBS series Meeting of Minds, he was Leonardo da Vinci in one 1979 episode and Shakespeare in another. Yulin played a news anchor on a struggling TV station on the 1990-91 CBS drama WIOU and through the years appeared on many other shows, including Kojak, Ironside, Cagney & Lacey, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, La Femme Nikita, The X-Files, Entourage, The Blacklist, Veep, Murphy Brown and Billions. Among Yulin's notable films were Night Moves (1975), St. Ives (1976), Another Woman (1988), Narrow Margin (1990), Murder at 1600 (1997), Bean (1997), Cradle Will Rock (1999), Chelsea Walls (2001), Rush Hour 2 (2001) and Norman (2016). Harris was prepping to start production this week with a role in the Michael Hoffman-directed MGM+ series American Classic, starring Kevin Kline and Laura Linney. Said Hoffman, 'Harris Yulin was very simply one of the greatest artists I have ever encountered.' Yulin was married to actress Gwen Welles (Nashville) from 1975 until her death in 1993 at age 42 from cancer. He married actress Kristen Lowman (Picket Fences) in September 2005, and she survives him, as does son-in-law Ted, nephew Martin and godchildren Marco and Lara. His also was predeceased by his daughter, actress Claire Lucido. Best of The Hollywood Reporter 13 of Tom Cruise's Most Jaw-Dropping Stunts Hollywood Stars Who Are One Award Away From an EGOT 'The Goonies' Cast, Then and Now
New York Post
12-06-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Post
Harris Yulin, ‘Scarface' and ‘Ghostbusters II' actor, dead at 87
Harris Yulin, the stage and screen actor who was best known for his roles in the films 'Scarface' and 'Ghostbusters II,' has died. He was 87. Yulin died of cardiac arrest on Tuesday in New York City, his family and his manager, Sue Leibman, confirmed to The Post. 'Yulin was part of the vanguard of a generation who cared passionately about the craft of acting,' the statement read. 'This deep, lifelong dedication led to extraordinary, resonant performances that were a gift to audiences, the actors he worked with, and the art of acting itself.' Advertisement 10 Harris Yulin attends 'The Emperor's Club' premiere in Beverly Hills in Nov. 2002. Getty Images Yulin was born on November 5, 1937 in Los Angeles. He made his New York stage debut in 1963 in 'Next Time I'll Sing to You,' before making his Broadway debut in 1980 in the revival of 'Watch on the Rhine.' His next Broadway shows included 'The Price,' 'The Visit,' 'The Diary of Anne Frank,' 'Hedda Gabler' and more. He also directed many plays such as 'The Glass Menagerie,' 'The Trip to Bountiful' and ' The Man Who Came to Dinner.' Advertisement 10 Harris Yulin attends 'Our Lady Of Kibeho' opening night on Broadway in 2014. WireImage Yulin's first movie was the 1970 satirical black comedy drama 'End of the Road' starring James Earl Jones and Stacy Keach. He went on to appear in 'Scarface' (1983), 'Ghostbusters II' (1989), 'Clear and Present Danger' (1994), 'Bean' (1997), 'Rush Hour 2' (2001), 'Training Day' (2001), 'The Place Beyond the Pines' (2012) and more. 10 Harris Yulin, Bill Murray, Harold Ramis, Rick Moranis, Dan Aykroyd in 'Ghostbusters II.' ©Columbia Pictures/Courtesy Everett Collection Advertisement 10 Harris Yulin, Al Pacino, Steven Bauer in 'Scarface.' Moviestore/Shutterstock On television, Yulin was nominated for a Primetime Emmy Award for his guest role on 'Frasier' in 1996. He had a major arc on Netflix's 'Ozark,' as well as stints on 'Buffy the Vampire Slayer,' '24,' 'Veep,' 'Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt' and 'Billions.' In a 2010 interview with The Irish Times, Yulin described himself as 'not that high-profile.' 10 Josh Charles and Harris Yulin in 'Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt.' NBCU Photo Bank/NBCUniversal via Getty Images Advertisement 10 Harris Yulin, Jane Leeves, Kelsey Grammer, John Mahoney, David Hyde Pierce in 'Frasier.' NBCUniversal via Getty Images 10 Harris Yulin in the ABC tv movie 'Victory at Entebbe.' ABC 'I just do the next thing that comes along,' he said of his career. 'Whatever comes along that I want to do or that I feel I need to do. Oftentimes the things one does you don't think of doing or you have no idea that you're going to do.' According to his family, Yulin was working on the Michael Hoffman-directed MGM+ series 'American Classic' co-starring Kevin Kline, Laura Linney and Jon Tenney before his death. Yulin and Hoffman, 68, previously collaborated on the 2005 film 'Game 6.' 10 Harris Yulin in Canada in 1970. Toronto Star via Getty Images 'Harris Yulin was very simply one of the greatest artists I have ever encountered,' Hoffman said in a statement. 'His marriage of immense technique with an always fresh sense of discovery, gave his work an immediacy and vitality and purity I've experienced no where else.' 'And what he was as an actor, he was as a man, the grace, the humility, the generosity,' the director continued. 'All of us at 'American Classic' have been blessed by our experience with him. He will always remain the beating heart of our show.' 10 Harris Yulin with his wife Kristen Lowman at the 2016 Signature Theatre Gala. WireImage Advertisement 10 Harris Yulin at the 'A Bright New Boise' premiere in NYC in Feb. 2023. Getty Images for Signature Theatre Yulin notably dated Faye Dunaway from 1971 to 1972. They were co-stars in the 1971 Western film 'Doc.' He was married to actress Gwen Welles from 1975 until her death in 1993. Yulin is survived by his second wife, actress Kristen Lowman, son-in-law Ted Mineo, nephew Martin Crane, and godchildren Marco and Lara Greenberg. He was predeceased by his daughter, actress Claire Lucido.
