Career
Spencer began his television career on The Patty Duke Show, and eventually began appearing in supporting roles in feature films commencing with 1983's WarGames. He won an Obie Award for the 1981 off Broadway production of Still Life, about a Vietnam War veteran, and received a Drama Desk nomination for "The Day Room." He became a full-fledged supporting actor with the hit 1990 courtroom thriller Presumed Innocent portraying a tough, veteran homicide detective, starring opposite Harrison Ford. The same year, Spencer joined the cast of the television series L.A. Law, playing rumpled, pugnacious, street wise, trial attorney Tommy Mullaney. Spencer's work also extended to video games, portraying the role of Captain Hugh Paulsen in the 1995 video game Wing Commander IV: The Price of Freedom.
From 1999 until his death in 2005, Spencer was cast as White House Chief of Staff Leo McGarry on the hit NBC political drama series The West Wing. Both Spencer and his character were recovering alcoholics. He won a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Drama Series in 2002, after being judged on the show's third season episodes "Bartlet for America" and "We Killed Yamamoto".
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Famous quotes containing the word career:
“I seemed intent on making it as difficult for myself as possible to pursue my “male” career goal. I not only procrastinated endlessly, submitting my medical school application at the very last minute, but continued to crave a conventional female role even as I moved ahead with my “male” pursuits.”
—Margaret S. Mahler (1897–1985)
“They want to play at being mothers. So let them. Expressing tenderness in their own way will not prevent girls from enjoying a successful career in the future; indeed, the ability to nurture is as valuable a skill in the workplace as the ability to lead.”
—Anne Roiphe (20th century)
“Whether lawyer, politician or executive, the American who knows what’s good for his career seeks an institutional rather than an individual identity. He becomes the man from NBC or IBM. The institutional imprint furnishes him with pension, meaning, proofs of existence. A man without a company name is a man without a country.”
—Lewis H. Lapham (b. 1935)