Career
Silver made his stage debut starring in El Grande de Coca Cola in 1974. Producers Richard Flanzer and Roy Silver (no relation) opened it at the famed Whisky a Go Go on the Sunset Strip in L.A. The production ran for more than a year. Silver and his co-star, actor Jeff Goldblum, were discovered by Hollywood Film Agents during this show's historic run.
He made his film debut in Tunnel Vision in 1976. From 1976-78, he had a recurring role as Gary Levy in the sitcom Rhoda, a spin-off from The Mary Tyler Moore Show. Additional screen roles include a performance as the devoted son of Anne Bancroft in Garbo Talks (1984), an incompetent detective in Eat and Run (1986), the pistol-wielding psychopath stalking Jamie Lee Curtis in 1989's Blue Steel, and the lead in Paul Mazursky's Oscar-nominated Enemies: A Love Story (1989).
He starred as Jerry Lewis's character's son in the episode "Garment District Arc" of the crime show Wiseguy (1988). He portrayed defense attorney Alan Dershowitz in the true story Reversal of Fortune (1990), based on the trial of Claus von Bülow. From 1991-2000, Silver served as president of the Actors' Equity Association. He played a film producer in Best Friends opposite Burt Reynolds and Goldie Hawn and a film director in Mr. Saturday Night (1992). Silver portrayed a corrupt, rogue senator in the 1994 Jean-Claude Van Damme sci-fi thriller Timecop.
In 1998, he starred opposite Kirstie Alley for season two of her TV comedy series Veronica's Closet. Silver portrayed real life attorney Robert Shapiro in American Tragedy (2000), the story of the O.J. Simpson trial. He portrayed tennis player Bobby Riggs in the TV docudrama When Billie Beat Bobby (2001), about Riggs' real-life exhibition tennis match against Billie Jean King, which Riggs lost.
Silver was featured as Muhammad Ali's boxing trainer and cornerman Angelo Dundee in the biopic Ali (2001), directed by Michael Mann. From 2001-02 and again from 2005–06, he had a recurring role as presidential campaign advisor Bruno Gianelli on the NBC series The West Wing. Silver provided the narration for the 2004 political documentary film FahrenHYPE 9/11 that was produced as a conservative political response to the award-winning and controversial Michael Moore documentary film, Fahrenheit 9/11. One of his final film performances was as a judge in another true story, 2006's Find Me Guilty, directed by Sidney Lumet and starring Vin Diesel.
In February 2008, Silver began hosting The Ron Silver Show on Sirius Satellite Radio, which focused on politics and public affairs. The show aired live from 9–11am ET, during morning drive time, on Indie Talk, Sirius 110.
Read more about this topic: Ron Silver
Famous quotes containing the word career:
“My ambition in life: to become successful enough to resume my career as a neurasthenic.”
—Mason Cooley (b. 1927)
“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)