Mandy Patinkin

Mandy Patinkin
Mandy Patinkin, June 2008
Born	Mandel Bruce Patinkin November 30, 1952 (1952-11-30) Chicago, Illinois, U.S.
Occupation	Actor/Singer
Years active	1970–present
Spouse	Kathryn Grody (1980-present); 2 children
Website
Official website

Mandel Bruce "Mandy" Patinkin ( /pəˈtɪŋkɨn/; born November 30, 1952) is an award-winning American actor of stage and screen and a tenor vocalist. He is a noted interpreter of the musical works of Stephen Sondheim, and is best-known for his work in musical theatre, originating iconic roles such as Georges Seurat in Sunday in the Park with George, Archibald Craven in The Secret Garden, Burrs in The Wild Party and Che in the original Broadway production of Evita.

He has appeared in television series such as Chicago Hope, Dead Like Me and the first two seasons of Criminal Minds. He currently plays Saul Berenson in the Showtime series Homeland. His best-known film role was as Inigo Montoya in The Princess Bride in 1987. Other film roles include Alien Nation (1988), Yentl (1983), Dick Tracy, and The Adventures of Elmo in Grouchland (1999).

Early years

Patinkin was born in Chicago, Illinois, of Russian and Polish Jewish descent, the son of Doris "Doralee" Sinton, a homemaker, and Lester Patinkin, who worked for the People's Iron & Metal Company and the Scrap Corporation of America. His mother wrote Grandma Doralee Patinkin's Jewish Family Cookbook. Patinkin's cousins include:

• Mark Patinkin, author and nationally syndicated columnist for The Providence Journal
• Jason Patinkin, President of Columbia University's EarthCo
• Sheldon Patinkin of Columbia College Chicago's Theater Department, and a founder of The Second City.

Patinkin grew up in a middle class Jewish family and was raised in Conservative Judaism, attending religious school daily "from the age of seven to 13 or 14" and singing in synagogue choirs, as well as attending the Camp Surah in Michigan.

He attended South Shore High School, Kenwood Academy (1970 graduate), the University of Kansas, and Juilliard School. At Juilliard, he was a classmate of Kelsey Grammer. When the producers of the popular American sitcom Cheers were auditioning for the role of Dr. Frasier Crane, Patinkin put Grammer's name forward.

Career

After some TV commercial and radio appearances, including the CBS Radio Mystery Theater in 1974, Patinkin had his first success in musical theater, where he played the part of Che in Evita on Broadway in 1979. Patinkin went on to win that year's Tony Award for Best Performance by a Featured Actor in a Musical. He then moved to film, playing parts in movies such as Yentl and Ragtime. He returned to Broadway in 1984 to star in the Pulitzer Prize-winning musical Sunday in the Park with George, which saw him earn another Tony Award nomination for Best Actor (Musical).

Patinkin played Inigo Montoya in Rob Reiner's 1987 The Princess Bride (which Patinkin considers his favorite role), in which he delivers the iconic line, "Hello, my name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die." Patinkin found his studies a huge asset in The Princess Bride, playing the role of the best swordsman in the country, short of the main character, and part of his role included proficiency in fencing at a professional level. Over the next decade he continued to appear in movies, such as Dick Tracy and Alien Nation.

On Broadway, over the next decade, he appeared in the musical The Secret Garden. He also released two solo albums, titled Mandy Patinkin (1989)and Dress Casual (1990).

In 1994, he took the role of Dr. Jeffrey Geiger on CBS' Chicago Hope for which he won an Emmy Award. However, despite the award and the ratings success of the show, Patinkin left the show during the second season, as he was unhappy spending so much time away from his wife. He returned to the show in 1999 at the beginning of the sixth season, but it was later cancelled in 2000. Since Chicago Hope, Patinkin has appeared in a number of films. However, he has mostly performed as a singer, releasing three more albums. In 1995 he guest starred in The Simpsons in the episode "Lisa's Wedding" as Hugh Parkfield, Lisa's future English groom.

In 1998, he debuted his most personal project, Mamaloshen, a collection of traditional, classic, and contemporary songs sung entirely in Yiddish ("Mamaloshen" is Yiddish for "mother tongue"). The stage production of Mamaloshen was performed on and off–Broadway, and has toured throughout the country. The recording of Mamaloshen won the Deutschen Schallplattenpreis (Germany’s equivalent of the Grammy Award).

In 1999 he co-starred in The Adventures of Elmo in Grouchland as the villainous Huxley, who tries to steal Elmo's blanket. He returned to Broadway in 2000 in the New York Shakespeare Festival's The Wild Party, earning another Tony Award nomination for Best Actor (Musical). Recently, he has also been seen in the Showtime comedy-drama Dead Like Me as Rube Sofer. In 2004, he played a six–week engagement of his one–man concert at the Off Broadway complex Dodger Stages.

In September 2005, he debuted in the role of Jason Gideon, an experienced profiler just coming back to work after a series of nervous breakdowns, in the CBS crime drama Criminal Minds.

Patinkin was absent from a table read for Criminal Minds and did not return for a third season. The departure from the show was not due to contractual or salary matters, but over creative differences. Many weeks before his departure, in a videotaped interview carried in the online magazine Monaco Revue, Patinkin told journalists at the Festival de Télévision de Monte-Carlo that he loathed violence on television and was uncomfortable with certain scenes in Criminal Minds.

He spoke of having planned to tour the world with a musical and wanting to inject more comedy into the entertainment business. The dark and violent nature of the show got to be too much for Patinkin, and in later episodes during the 2007-08 season, Jason Gideon was written out of the series, and replaced by Special Agent David Rossi (played by Joe Mantegna).

On October 14, 2009, it was announced that Patinkin would be a guest-star on an episode of Three Rivers, which aired on November 15, 2009. He played a patient with Lou Gehrig's Disease injured in a car accident who asks the doctors at Three Rivers hospital to pull him off life support so his organs can be donated. He filmed an appearance on The Whole Truth that had been scheduled to air December 15, 2010, but ABC pulled the series from its schedule two weeks prior.

He starred in the new musical Paradise Found, co-directed by Harold Prince and Susan Stroman, at the Menier Chocolate Factory, London. The musical played a limited engagement from May 2010 through June 26, 2010.

Patinkin and Patti Lupone perform their concert An Evening with Patti Lupone and Mandy Patinkin on Broadway for a limited 63-performance run starting November 21, 2011, at the Barrymore Theatre. This concert marks the first time the pair has performed together on Broadway since they appeared together in Evita.

Personal life

Patinkin married actress and writer Kathryn Grody in 1980. They have two sons, Isaac and Gideon. Gideon joined his father onstage in Dress Casual in 2011.

Patinkin suffered from keratoconus, a degenerative eye disease, in the mid-1990s. This led to two corneal transplants, his right cornea in 1997 and his left in 1998. He also was diagnosed with and treated for prostate cancer in 2004. He celebrated his first year of recovery in 2005 by doing a 280-mile charity bike ride with his son Isaac — the Arava Institute Hazon Israel Ride: Cycling for Peace, Partnership & Environmental Protection.

Patinkin has been involved in a variety of Jewish causes and cultural activities. He sings in Yiddish, often in concert, and on his album Mamaloshen. He also wrote introductions for two books on Jewish culture, The Jewish American Family Album, by Dorothy and Thomas Hoobler, and Grandma Doralee Patinkin's Holiday Cookbook: A Jewish Family's Celebrations, by his mother, Doralee Patinkin Rubin.

Patinkin contributed to the children's book Dewey Doo-it Helps Owlie Fly Again: A Musical Storybook inspired by Christopher Reeve prior to Christopher and Dana Reeve's deaths. The award winning book, published in 2005, benefits the Christopher Reeve Foundation and includes an audio CD with Patinkin singing and reading the story as well as Dana Reeve and Bernadette Peters singing.

He lives part time in Creede, Colorado

Awards

Awards

• 1980: Tony Award for Best Performance by a Featured Actor in a Musical - Evita
• 1987: CableACE Award for Best Actor in a Theatrical or Dramatic Special - Sunday in the Park with George
• 1995: Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series - Chicago Hope

Nominations

• 1984: Golden Globe Award for Best Performance by an Actor in a Motion Picture in a Comedy/Musical - Yentl
• 1990: Saturn Awards Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror Films for Best Supporting Actor - Alien Nation
• 1995: Golden Globe Award for Best Performance by an Actor in a TV-Series - Drama - Chicago Hope
• 1995: Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Drama Series - Chicago Hope
• 1996: Emmy Award for Outstanding Guest Actor in a Comedy Series - The Larry Sanders Show: "Eight"
• 1999: Emmy Award for Outstanding Guest Actor in a Drama Series - Chicago Hope: "Curing Cancer"
• 2003: DVD Exclusive Award for Best Original Song in a DVD, Premiere Movie - Run Ronnie Run: "How High the Mountain"

Work

Stage

Broadway

• Evita (1979) – Che (Tony Award, 1980)
• Sunday in the Park with George (1984) – Georges Seurat/George (Tony Award Nominee, 1984)
• Mandy Patinkin in Concert: Dress Casual (1989)
• The Secret Garden (1991) – Archibald Craven
• Falsettos (1993) – Marvin (Replacement)
• Sunday in the Park with George (Tenth Anniversary Concert) (1994) – George
• Mandy Patinkin in Concert (1997)
• Mandy Patinkin in Concert: Mamaloshen (1998)
• The Wild Party (2000) – Burrs (Tony Award Nominee, 2000)
• Celebrating Sondheim
• An Evening with Patti LuPone and Mandy Patinkin (2011)

Other theater

• Enemy of the People (Williamstown Theater Festival)
• Henry IV, Part I
• The Winter's Tale
• The Knife
• Leave It to Beaver is Dead
• Trelawny of the Wells (1975) – Mr. Arthur Gower
• Hamlet (1975–76) – Fortinbras, Player King
• Rebel Woman
• The Shadow Box (1977) – Mark
• The Split and Savages
• Follies in Concert (1985) - Buddy Plummer
• The Tempest (2008) (Classic Stage Company)
• Compulsion (by Rinne Groff) (2010-2011) (Yale Repertory Theatre, Berkeley Repertory Theatre, and The Public Theatre) - Sid Silver
• Paradise Found (2010) (Menier Chocolate Factory, London, UK) - Eunuch

Filmography

Film

• The Big Fix (1978) – pool man
• French Postcards (1979) – Sayyid
• Last Embrace (1979) – first commuter
• Night of the Juggler (1980) – Allesandro the cabbie
• Ragtime (1981) – Tateh
• Yentl (1983) – Avigdor
• Daniel (1983) – Paul Isaacson
• Maxie (1985) – Nick
• Tenkû no shiro Rapyuta (1986) (voice: English version) – Louis
• The Princess Bride (1987) – Inigo Montoya
• Alien Nation (1988) – Detective Samuel 'George' Francisco
• The House on Carroll Street (1988) – Ray Salwen
• Dick Tracy (1990) – 88 Keys
• True Colors (1991) – John Palmeri
• Impromptu (1991) – Alfred de Musset
• The Doctor (1991) – Dr. Murray Kaplan
• The Music of Chance (1993) – Jim Nashe
• Life with Mikey (1993) – irate man
• Squanto: A Warrior's Tale (1994) – Brother Daniel
• Lulu On The Bridge (1998) – Philip Kleinman
• Men with Guns (1998) – Andrew
• The Adventures of Elmo in Grouchland (1999) – Huxley
• Piñero (2001) – Joseph Papp
• Run Ronnie Run (2002) – as himself, portraying Ronnie Dobbs, in an in-movie stage performance
• The Choking Man (2005); Rick
• Everyone's Hero (2006) (voice) – Stanley Irving
• 4.3.2.1 ... The Countdown Begins (2010) – Jago L

Television

• That Thing on ABC – (1978), performer
• Taxi (TV series) (1978) - Alan in "Memories of Cab 804 (Part 2)."
• Charleston – (1979), Beaudine Croft
• Sunday in the Park with George – (1986), Georges Seurat/George
• Chicago Hope – Dr. Jeffrey Geiger (Emmy Award, 1994–95)
• The Hunchback (TV version) (1997) – Quasimodo
• The Larry Sanders Show – Himself
• Law & Order – Levi March in "Absentia" (Season 13, episode 290)
• The Simpsons – Hugh Parkfield in "Lisa's Wedding" (Season 6, episode 19)
• Touched By An Angel – Satan in Netherlands (single-episode guest star) (Season 7, episode 23)
• Broken Glass (1996) – Dr. Harry Hyman
• Strange Justice (1999) – Kenneth Duberstein
• Dead Like Me (2003–2004) - Rube Sofer
• NTSB: The Crash of Flight 323 (2004) – Al Cummings
• Criminal Minds – (2005–2007) Jason Gideon (show's star seasons 1, 2 & two ep season 3)
• Three Rivers - Victor, an ALS Patient (2009, one episode)
• Homeland - Saul Berenson

Television commercials

• 7 Up (1970)
• Frosted Mini-Wheats (1971) (the first Kellogg's Frosted Mini-Wheats commercial)
• Crestor (2006) (a statin drug that lowers LDL Cholesterol)

Discography

• Evita (cast album, 1978)
• Sunday in the Park with George (cast album, 1984)
• Mandy Patinkin (1989)
• Dress Casual (1990)
• The Secret Garden (cast album,1991)
• Experiment (1994)
• Oscar & Steve (1995)
• Mamaloshen (1998)
• Myths and Hymns (cast album, 1999)
• The Wild Party (cast album, 2000)
• Kidults (2001)
• Mandy Patinkin sings Sondheim (2002)

External links

• The Mandy Patinkin official website
• The Mandy Patinkin in Concert official website
• Mandy Patinkin at the Internet Broadway Database
• Mandy Patinkin at the Internet Movie Database
• Mandy Patinkin at the Internet Off-Broadway Database
• The Princess Bride...On A Bike! In 2005 he reprised his most famous role and line for charity at a New York bike ride.
• Official website for "Criminal Minds" on CBS Television.