Ed Asner

Edward "Ed" Asner (born November 15, 1929) is an American film, television, and stage actor, voice actor, and a former president of the Screen Actors Guild. He is primarily known for his role as Lou Grant during the 1970s and early 1980s, on both The Mary Tyler Moore Show and its spin-off series Lou Grant, making him one of the few television actors to portray the same leading character in both a comedy and a drama. He is also known for portraying Santa Claus in the 2003 comedy Elf and its 2014 remake Elf: Buddy's Musical Christmas.

In 2009, he starred as the voice of Carl Fredricksen in Pixar's animated film Up, and made a guest appearance on CSI: NY in the episode "Yahrseit". In early 2011, Asner returned to television as butcher Hank Greziak in Working Class, the first original sitcom on cable channel CMT. He starred in the Canadian television series Michael, Tuesdays and Thursdays, on CBC Television and has appeared in the 2013 television series The Glades. Edward has most recently starred as Guy Redmayne, a wealthy, homophobic billionaire who supports Alicia Florick's campaign in the sixth season of The Good Wife.

Lou Grant

Louis "Lou" Grant is a fictional character played by Edward Asner in two television series produced by MTM Enterprises for CBS. The first was The Mary Tyler Moore Show (1970–1977), a half-hour light-hearted situation comedy in which the character was the news director at fictional television station WJM-TV. A spinoff series, entitled Lou Grant (1977–1982), was an hour-long serious dramatic series which frequently engaged in social commentary, featuring the character as city editor of the fictional Los Angeles Tribune. Although spin-offs are common on American television, Lou Grant remains the only character to have a leading role on both a popular comedy and a popular dramatic series.

Fictional biography

Pre-WJM-TV

Although the setting of The Mary Tyler Moore Show might have implied that he was a native Minnesotan, Lou Grant in fact established that he was born in the fictional town of Goshen, Michigan. He was the son of John Simpson Grant and Ellen Hammersmith Grant; his grandfather was a pharmacist. At some point in his youth and early adulthood he developed a lifelong affection for westerns, particularly those starring John Wayne. In high school, he was a tackle for his school's football team. Soon after high school, he married Edie MacKenzie (Priscilla Morrill), at an age young enough to have four grandchildren before he turned 50.

Mary Tyler Moore

Mary Tyler Moore (born December 29, 1936) is an American actress, primarily known for her roles in television sitcoms, including The Mary Tyler Moore Show (1970–77), in which she starred as Mary Richards, a thirty-something single woman who worked as a local news producer in Minneapolis, and, earlier, The Dick Van Dyke Show (1961–66), in which she played Laura Petrie, a former dancer turned Westchester homemaker, wife and mother. Her notable film work includes 1967's Thoroughly Modern Millie and 1980's Ordinary People, in which she played a role that was very different from the television characters she had portrayed, and for which she was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress.

Moore has been active in charity work and various political causes, particularly the issues of animal rights and diabetes mellitus type 1. She was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes early in the run of The Mary Tyler Moore Show. She also dealt with alcoholism, which she wrote about in her first of two memoirs. In May 2011, she underwent elective brain surgery to remove a benign meningioma.

Tyler Moore

Tyler Moore may refer to:

See also

Abby Martin

Abigail Suzanne "Abby" Martin (born September 6, 1984) is an American journalist and presenter of The Empire Files, a weekly investigative news program on teleSUR English. She was formerly the host of Breaking the Set on RT America network, working from the Washington, D.C. bureau. Before hosting her own show, she had worked for two years as a correspondent for RT America.

Martin is also an artist and activist, and helped found the citizen journalism website, Media Roots. She serves on the board of directors for the Media Freedom Foundation which manages Project Censored. Martin appeared in the documentary film Project Censored The Movie: Ending the Reign of Junk Food News (2013), and co-directed 99%: The Occupy Wall Street Collaborative Film (2013).

Early life

Martin grew up in Pleasanton, California, where she attended Amador Valley High School, graduating in 2002. She became interested in journalism when her old high school boyfriend enlisted in the military after the September 11 attacks in 2001. "I didn't want him going to war, let alone fighting in one," she recalls. "I began to critically ask 'What is really going on?'" By the time she was a sophomore at San Diego State University, she began questioning what she called the "selling" of the Iraq War by the media. She received an undergraduate degree in political science and minored in Spanish.