Fred Melamed

Fred Melamed
Born	(1956-05-13) May 13, 1956 New York City, New York, U.S.
Education	Hampshire College (BA) Yale University (MFA)
Occupation(s)	Actor, writer
Years active	1981–present
Spouse(s)	Leslee Spieler (1999–present; 2 children)

Fred Melamed (born May 13, 1956) is an American actor and writer. He is best known for portraying Sy Ableman in A Serious Man, Bruce Ben-Bacharach in Lady Dynamite, Sam Soto in In a World..., and for appearing in seven films directed by Woody Allen.

Early life

Melamed was born to a secular Jewish family in New York City, New York. His biological mother is actress/director Nancy Zala and his biological father, British psychoanalyst Stan Silverstone, was a relative of the prominent Adler acting family, including Luther and Stella Adler. He is the adopted son of Louis, a New York television producer, and Syma (Krichefsky) Melamed, a sometime actress and housewife. As a child, he attended the Hunter College Elementary School, a primary school for gifted children, and Riverdale Country School.

His father worked with TV pioneer Nat Hiken on such shows as Car 54, Where Are You? and The Phil Silvers Show (aka Sgt. Bilko). When he was sixteen, his family had financial difficulties, and was forced to move to Hollywood, Florida. Melamed has said that he was raised in 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. However, he credits his non-religious upbringing as helping him to develop a belief in God later in life, as he had no "forced dogma to overcome."

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.

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, along with 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 Phillips of the Chicago Tribune, and Roger Ebert all said his performance was worthy of an Academy Award nomination.

In addition, Melamed turns up prolifically in Woody Allen films. He has appeared in more Allen movies than any other actor besides Diane Keaton and Mia Farrow (and Allen himself). Melamed is featured in 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, Melamed stars with Maria Bamford in the Netflix comedy Lady Dynamite, on FX's Emmy Award-winning Fargo, Hulu's Golden Globe Award-nominated Casual, the Fox comedy New Girl, and Verizon Go90's sports send-up Now We're Talking. He is a present or past recurring guest star on USA Network's Benched, Showtime's House of Lies, HBO's Girls, Childrens Hospital, Blunt Talk, FX's Married, and Trial & Error. In previous seasons, he played 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 CBS situation comedy The Crazy Ones with Robin Williams and Sarah Michelle Gellar. In 2017, he appeared as a special guest star in the acclaimed Fargo episode "The Law of Non-Contradiction". He also appeared in 2 episodes of Brooklyn Nine-Nine as author, DC Parlov.

Melamed's slate of upcoming films includes the Sundance film Lemon, a collaboration with Brett Gelman and Janicza Bravo, Brawl in Cell Block 99 opposite Vince Vaughn, Sean McGinly's Silver Lake, which he stars in with Martin Starr, and Dragged Across Concrete. Melamed recently starred as Sam in Lake Bell's In a World..., winner of the Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award at the Sundance Film Festival, opposite Kurt Russell and Richard Jenkins in Bone Tomahawk, and re-teamed with the Coen brothers and co-stars George Clooney, Tilda Swinton, and Ralph Fiennes in Hail, Caesar!. He starred previously in Get On Up, a bio-pic about the life of James Brown, and opposite Elliott Gould, as auteur/director Bob Wilson, in Fred Won't Move Out, a film about the decline of a stubborn patriarch and his family. Other recent 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 Some Kind of Beautiful, where Melamed plays a villain, opposite Pierce Brosnan and Jessica Alba. Melamed has also voiced cult-leader Cris Formage in the Grand Theft Auto video game series.

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 is currently at work on a long-form, television version of The Preservationist, a fictional drama 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.

Filmography

Film

Year	Title	Role	Notes
1983	Lovesick	Psychoanalyst
1986	Hannah and Her Sisters	Dr. Grey
1986	The Mission	Cabeza (voice)	Uncredited
1986	The Manhattan Project	Assay Technician
1987	Radio Days	Bradley	Uncredited
1987	Ishtar	The Caid of Assari
1987	The Pick-up Artist	George
1987	Suspect	Morty Rosenthal
1988	Sticky Fingers	The Cop (voice)	Uncredited
1988	Another Woman	Engagement Party Guest / Patient (voice)
1988	The Good Mother	Dr. Payne
1989	Crimes and Misdemeanors	The Dean	Uncredited
1991	Shadows and Fog	Undesirables Onlooker
1992	Husbands and Wives	Mel	Uncredited
2002	Hollywood Ending	Pappas
2009	A Serious Man	Sy Ableman
2012	The Dictator	Head Nuclear Scientist
2012	Fred Won't Move Out	Bob
2013	In a World...	Sam
2013	HairBrained	Benny Greenberg
2013	Blumenthal	Jimmy Basmati
2014	Get on Up	Syd Nathan
2014	Adult Beginners	Story Book Reader (voice)
2014	Some Kind of Beautiful	Victor Piggott
2015	Bone Tomahawk	Clarence
2016	Hail, Caesar!	Communist Writer
2016	Passengers	Observatory Voice
2017	Lemon	Howard
2017	Brawl in Cell Block 99	Mr. Irving
2018	The Spy Who Dumped Me	Roger
2018	Lying and Stealing	Dimitri	Post-production
2018	Silver Lake	Howard	Post-production
2018	Dragged Across Concrete	Mr. Edmington	Post-production

Television

Year	Title	Role	Notes
1981–1982	One Life to Live	Alberto Cervantes	Unknown episodes
1989	Another World	Crazed Homeless Man	1 episode
1990	America Tonight	Announcer	Unknown episodes
1991–1993	Silk Stalkings	Announcer	54 episodes
1992–1996	FTL Newsfeed	The Alien Presence	Unknown episodes
1998–2003	The NFL Today	Announcer	Unknown episodes
2000–2001	Courage the Cowardly Dog	Spirit of the Harvest Moon / The Magic Tree of Nowhere (voices)	12 episodes
2005	Wonder Pets	The Magician	Episode: "The Amazing Ollie"
2010	Law & Order	Judge Bertram Hill	Episode: "Steel-Eyed Death"
2010	Law & Order: Special Victims Unit	Dan Goldberg	Episode: "Merchandise"
2011	Curb Your Enthusiasm	Dr. Thurgood	Episode: "Mister Softee"
2011–2014	The Good Wife	Judge Alan Karpman	3 episodes
2012	30 Rock	Jack	Episode: "There's No I in America"
2013–2014	The Crazy Ones	Himself	2 episodes
2014	Benched	Judge Nelson	5 episodes
2015	Girls	Avi Mensusen	Episode: "Tad & Loreen & Avi & Shanaz"
2015	House of Lies	Harvey Oberholt	4 episodes
2015	Childrens Hospital	Leonard Hillman	Episode: "With Great Power..."
2015	Married	Professor Donald Holt	Episode: "1997"
2015–2016	Blunt Talk	Dr. Mendelson	3 episodes
2015–2018	Casual	Charles Cole	8 episodes
2016	New Girl	J. Cronkite Valley-Forge	3 Episodes; "Big Mama P", "Road Trip", and "A Chill Day In"
2016	The Detour	Conquistadors' Announcer (voice)	Episode: "The Restaurant"
2016–2017	Lady Dynamite	Bruce Ben-Bacharach	20 episodes
2016–2017	Brooklyn Nine-Nine	D.C. Parlov	2 episodes
2017	Trial & Error	Howard Mankiewicz	2 episodes
2017	Fargo	Howard Zimmerman	Episode: "The Law of Non-Contradiction"
2017–2018	Adventure Time	Gumbald (voice)	7 episodes
2018	Life in Pieces	Dr. Dave Collins	Episode: "Parents Ancestry Coupon Chaperone"
2018	Please Understand Me	Dr. Rick	Episode: "Dr. Rick"
2018	Room 104	Narrator	Episode: "Drywall Guys"
2018	Superstore	Richard Simms	Episode: "New Initiative"
2018	Black Monday	Not Michael Milken #2	Episode: "Not The Predator's Ball"

Video games

Year	Title	Voice role	Notes
1998–2003	NCAA Football series	Announcer
1999	The Multipath Adventures of Superman	Lex Luthor
2004	Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas	Cris Formage
2013	Grand Theft Auto V	Cris Formage
2013	Grand Theft Auto Online	Cris Formage
2014	Diablo III: Reaper of Souls	Male Atarias
2018	Adventure Time: Pirates of the Enchiridion	Gumbald

External links

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