Ron Silver

The actor who preferred reality

Ron Silver was never a comfortable actor for the Hollywood industry. He was born in Brooklyn in 1946 and grew up in a middle-class Jewish family where intellectual training mattered far more than the glamour of the cameras. Fate, however, led him to the stage after he studied Chinese Studies at Columbia University and spent some time traveling through Vietnam and Cambodia.

His film debut was not especially explosive. In 1976 he appeared in Tunnel Vision and spent much of that decade bouncing between supporting roles on television and small productions. Silver had an unusual presence, combining an extremely sharp gaze with a verbal aggressiveness that made him perfect for cynical characters.

He was a method actor trapped in an intellectual's body.

In 1988 came the moment that defined his standing in the New York theater world. He starred in David Mamet's Speed-the-Plow on Broadway alongside Madonna and Joe Mantegna. He won the Tony Award for Best Actor for his portrayal of Charlie Fox, and that role as an ambitious producer gave him the freedom to choose riskier projects in film.

Villains in Suits and Presidential Offices

In the late eighties, his career took an interesting turn under the direction of Paul Mazursky. In 1989 he shot Enemies, A Love Story, playing a Holocaust survivor caught between three women. It was a restrained, dry performance that proved Silver could carry a weighty drama without falling back on the usual mannerisms of actors of his generation.

But the general public mostly remembers him for his villain roles or political strategist parts. In 1994 he played the corrupt Senator McComb in Timecop, facing off against Jean-Claude Van Damme. That unscrupulous politician role became his specialty in the following years, because Silver knew how to give his darkest characters a chilling calm.

Politics ended up outweighing the celluloid.

Between 2001 and 2006, he played Bruno Gianelli in the series The West Wing. His character was a brilliant political consultant who helped President Bartlet win elections. Oddly enough, the fiction ended up blending with his real life in a way few in the industry forgave.

The ideological turn that isolated him

Ron Silver was a committed liberal activist for decades. He co-founded the Creative Coalition in 1989 to defend artists' rights and got involved in countless progressive causes. But the attacks of September 11, 2001 changed how he saw the world. He then chose to publicly back George W. Bush's foreign policy and became a staunch defender of the Iraq War.

This change of heart came at a cost in the power circles of New York and Los Angeles. He admitted in several interviews that he stopped receiving job offers because of his conservative political positions. He never took back his views, however, and kept appearing on political analysis programs until his health began to seriously decline.

In 2007 he filmed his last major projects, including his role in the series Ten Days That Unexpectedly Changed America. During those months he was already battling the illness that forced him to step away from the media spotlight. Silver always preferred personal integrity over keeping a packed filming schedule in an industry that didn't share his vision.

He passed away on March 15, 2009 in Manhattan from esophageal cancer at the age of 62.