Fred Melamed

Fred Melamed (born May 13, 1956) is an American actor and writer.

Early life

Melamed is the adopted son of prominent New York television producer Louis Melamed, who worked with TV pioneer Nat Hiken on such shows as Car 54, Where Are You? and The Phil Silvers Show (aka Sgt. Bilko). His biological mother is actor/director Nancy Zala and his biological father was a relative to the prominent Adler family, including Lucy and Stella Adler.^[1] According to Melamed he was born in New York City to a non-believer Jewish family who never went to synagogue, except to attend a cousin's bar mitzvah. When he was asked if he wanted to attend Hebrew school, he said no, and thus had no religious training.^[2]

Career

He received his theatrical training at Hampshire College and the Yale School of Drama. At Yale, he was a Samuel F. B. Morse College Graduate Fellow. He was also a nominee for the Irene Ryan Award, a prize conferred upon the most promising young actors in the United States. While still at Yale, he was an instructor at the well-known performing arts camp, Stagedoor Manor. After his training, he appeared on stage with several resident theatre companies, including The Guthrie Theater, the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, The Yale Repertory Theater, and on Broadway in the Tony Award-Winning Amadeus. Following Amadeus, Melamed entered what he called "a period of personal darkness", during which he effectively stopped acting on stage. At the same time, with an insider's understanding of the industry and assistance from his agent, he became established as a voice actor, and continued to do film work.^[3]

Melamed's voice became a familiar presence on television, serving as the sound of the Olympics, Mercedes Benz, CBS Sports, USA Network, the Super Bowl, and numerous commercials and television programs. He became known within the industry as a voice actor, appearing in the Grand Theft Auto series, and dubbing several actors' entire performances in films. But it was for his portrayal of "sensitive" villain Sy Ableman, in Joel and Ethan Coen's 2009 film, A Serious Man, which was nominated for Best Picture, at the 2010 Academy Awards, that he became most widely known. About that character, Film Confessional said, "Sy Ableman is as great a contemporary movie villain as The Joker, Hans Landa, or Anton Chigurh.... The character Fred Melamed contrives is the year's most brilliant force of destruction."

For his performance in A Serious Man, Melamed, the Coen Brothers, and the film's Ensemble and Casting Directors won Film Independent's Independent Spirit Robert Altman Award. New York magazine listed Melamed's work as among the Best Performances of the Decade, and Empire called Sy Ableman "One of The Best Coen Bros. Characters of All Time". Several leading U.S. critics, including A. O. Scott of The New York Times, Michael Philips of the Chicago Tribune and Roger Ebert said his performance was worthy of Academy Award nomination.

In addition, Melamed has appeared in a host of Woody Allen films, including Hannah and Her Sisters, Radio Days, Another Woman, Crimes and Misdemeanors, Shadows and Fog, Husbands and Wives, and Hollywood Ending. He has also played significant supporting roles in Suspect, The Good Mother, The Mission, The Pickup Artist and other films.

On television, he plays Larry David's smug psychiatrist, Dr. Arthur Thurgood, on Curb Your Enthusiasm, tough-guy jurist Judge Alan Karpman, on The Good Wife, and played himself in the 2013 situation comedy The Crazy Ones with Robin Williams and Sarah Michelle Gellar.

In recent film, he starred in Lake Bell's In a World..., winner of the 2013 Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award at the Sundance Film Festival, a comedy about life among the cream of L.A.'s voiceover royalty. Melamed also played Elliott Gould's son, auteur/director Bob Wilson, in Fred, a film about the decline of a stubborn patriarch and his family. Other films include The Dictator (2012), with Sacha Baron Cohen and Sir Ben Kingsley, where Melamed appears in a cameo as the Director of the dictator's Nuclear Weapons Program, and Blumenthal, where Melamed stars as deceased playwright Brian Cox's agent, best friend, and, possibly, lover.

On Broadway in 2011, after a long hiatus from the theatre, Melamed originated the roles of The Father in Ethan Coen's Talking Cure, and Thomas Moran in Elaine May's George Is Dead, two of the one-act plays that comprised Relatively Speaking. Subsequently, Melamed took on the role of Vanya in the Guild Hall production of Uncle Vanya, about which The New York Times said he gave "... an excellent ... multi-layered performance ... Mr. Melamed easily inhabits the comic, awkward lover, but also brings out Vanya's vast loneliness ...".

As a writer, he has produced screenplays including Girl of the Perfume River, A Jones for Gash, The Asshat Project, and most recently, The Preservationist, a fictional film inspired by the case of Melamed's college friend, Edward Forbes Smiley III, a renowned cartographic expert and dealer, who admitted to having been the most brazen and prolific map thief of all time.

Personal life

Melamed lives with his wife and twin sons in Los Angeles. Both of the Melamed children were born with autism, and he and his wife have been involved in advocacy for persons living with Autism Spectrum Disorder and their families.^[4]

References

External links

• Fred Melamed at the Internet Movie Database
• Fred Melamed at the Internet Broadway Database