Ed Asner

Ed Asner
Birth place	Kansas City, Missouri, USA
MM Credits
Character	Kris Kringle
Season	9
Episode	A Merry Murdoch Christmas
Position	Guest Cast member
Other Credits
TV and Films	The Mary Tyler Moore Show

Edward "Ed" Asner was 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.

Ed was born in Kansas City, Missouri. His Jewish Russian-born parents ran a second-hand shop. He was raised in an Orthodox Jewish family.

Asner attended the University of Chicago in Chicago, Illinois. He worked on the assembly line for General Motors before  Asner serving in the U.S. Army Signal Corps and appeared in plays that toured Army camps in Europe. Following his military service, Asner joined the Playwrights Theatre Company in Chicago, but left for New York City before members of that company regrouped as the Compass Players in the mid-1950s. He later made guest appearances with the successor to Compass, The Second City, and is considered part of The Second City extended family.

In 2009, he starred as the voice of Carl Fredricksen in Pixar's animated film Up, and made a guest appearance onCSI: 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.

Asner died of natural causes in his home in the Tarzana neighborhood of Los Angeles, California, United States on the morning of August 29, 2021. He was 91 years old.

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