Ed Asner

The Boss Nobody Wanted to Have

Eddie Asner didn't have the look Hollywood wanted for its leading men in the 1960s. He had a stern face, a sturdy build and a receding hairline that showed up uninvited. Before stepping onto a set, he worked on an assembly line at General Motors and served in the Army Signal Corps.

In 1970, he landed the role of Lou Grant in The Mary Tyler Moore Show, and his life changed completely. He played a grumpy, alcoholic, somewhat chauvinistic news director who ended up winning over the whole country. The chemistry with his co-stars was so genuine that the series stayed on the air for seven straight seasons.

And the gamble paid off.

When the comedy ended in 1977, the character didn't die with it. The producers decided to move Lou Grant into a newspaper drama with his own name as the title. It's a unique case in American television because Asner won five Emmy Awards playing the same character in two different genres, something no one has managed to repeat with such ease.

The Price of Talking Too Much

Asner was not a docile actor who simply read his lines and went home. In 1981, he became president of the Screen Actors Guild (SAG) and used his position to openly criticize U.S. foreign policy. He strongly opposed the military intervention in El Salvador, which earned him powerful enemies in network offices.

In 1982, CBS abruptly canceled Lou Grant even though the ratings were still holding up. The actor always maintained that it was a direct political revenge for his left-wing views and his public activism. Sponsors pulled their support, and the atmosphere became unbearable for him for a good season.

But the phone stopped ringing.

For years, he took one supporting role after another in TV movies and low-profile series. He didn't mind working on smaller projects because he needed to pay the bills and stay relevant in the guild. His voice became his best working tool, and in the 1990s he started voicing characters in animated series such as Spider-Man and Gargoyles.

A Curmudgeon for the New Century

His complete commercial comeback came in 2009 thanks to an animated film. Pixar chose him to voice Carl Fredricksen in Up, an elderly man who refuses to leave his home and travels to South America with thousands of balloons. The movie earned more than $730 million worldwide and connected him with a generation of kids who had no idea who Lou Grant was.

And the success continued.

In 2011, he played Warren Buffett in the HBO film Too Big to Fail and showed that his dramatic range was still intact. He appeared in series such as The Good Wife and Cobra Kai, where he often played older men with a biting sense of humor and very little patience. He never stopped working or complaining about the social injustices he saw in the daily press.

He died on August 29, 2021 at his home in Los Angeles, surrounded by his family. He was 91 years old and left behind more than 400 acting credits in the industry database. His last posthumous appearance came in 2023 on the animated series Carl’s Date.