Live UpdateFrom the Liveblog of Monday, April 10, 2023
Jewish actor Michael Lerner dies at 81
Michael Lerner appears at the opening night of Bette Midler in 'I'll Eat You at Last: A Chat with Sue Mengers' at the Geffen Playhouse in Los Angeles on December 5, 2013. (Vince Bucci/Invision for Geffen/AP Images, File)
Michael Lerner, the Brooklyn-born character actor who played a myriad of imposing figures in his 60 years in the business, including monologuing movie mogul Jack Lipnick in “Barton Fink,” the crooked club owner Bugsy Calhoun in “Harlem Nights” and an angry publishing executive in “Elf” has died. He was 81.
His nephew, actor Sam Lerner, announced his death in an Instagram post Sunday. Sam Lerner wrote that his uncle died Saturday but did not provide further details.
Lerner was born in 1941 to Romanian-Jewish parents and raised in Brooklyn’s Red Hook neighborhood.
