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Murray Opthamologist, Murray Optometrists, Cottonwood Eye & Laser... cottonwoodeye.com | Welcome from Dr. John F. Murray|Sports Psychologist|Clinical... johnfmurray.com | Michael F. Murray, M.D. sequencing.hpcgg.org |
Fahrid Murray Abraham (in Arabic: فريد مراد ابراهيم الاحمد Farīd Murād Ibrāhīm Al-Aḥmad;[1] born October 24, 1939) is an American actor. He became known during the 1980s, after winning the Oscar for Best Actor for his role in Amadeus, and has since appeared in many roles, both leading and supporting, in films, television, and mainly on stage.
[edit] Early lifeAbraham was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, the son of Josephine, a housewife, and Fahrid Abraham, an auto mechanic.[1] His father was an Assyrian Christian[2] who immigrated from Syria during the 1920s famine; his paternal grandfather was a cantor in the Syriac Orthodox Church.[1] Abraham's mother, one of fourteen children, was Italian American and the daughter of an immigrant who worked in the coal mines of Western Pennsylvania.[1] Abraham was raised in El Paso, Texas, near the Mexican border, where he was a gang member during his teenage years.[1] He attended Texas Western College (later named The University of Texas at El Paso), where he was given the best actor award by Alpha Psi Omega for his portrayal of the Indian nocona in 'Comanche Eagle' during the 1959-60 season. He attended the University of Texas at Austin, then studied acting under Uta Hagen in New York City. He began his acting career on the stage, debuting in a Los Angeles production of Ray Bradbury's The Wonderful Ice Cream Suit. [edit] CareerAbraham made his screen debut as a taxi driver in Neil Simon's The Prisoner of Second Avenue. Abraham can be seen as one of the undercover police officers along with Al Pacino in Sidney Lumet's Serpico (1973). He also appears very early in All the President's Men as one of the police officers who arrests the Watergate burglars in the offices of the Democratic National Headquarters. Until his acclaimed role in Amadeus, Abraham was perhaps best known to audiences as a talking leaf in a series of television commercials for Fruit of the Loom underwear.[3] He worked with Pacino again in the gangster film Scarface in 1983, playing drug dealer Omar Suarez. Abraham won the Academy Award for Best Actor for his role as Antonio Salieri in Amadeus (1984). After Amadeus he has mainly focused on classical theatre, and has starred in many Shakespearean productions such as Othello and Richard III, as well as many other plays by the likes of Samuel Beckett and Gilbert and Sullivan. He is also known for his roles in The Name of the Rose (1986), in which he played Bernardo Gui, nemesis to Sean Connery's William of Baskerville, Woody Allen's Mighty Aphrodite (1995), Ahdar Ru'afo in Star Trek: Insurrection (1998), and Gus Van Sant's Finding Forrester (2000), where he once again played nemesis to Connery. Abraham has focused on stage work throughout his career, giving notable performances as Pozzo in Mike Nichols's production of Waiting for Godot, Malvolio in Twelfth Night for the New York Shakespeare Festival, and Shylock in The Merchant of Venice, for a New York-based theatre company called Theatre For A New Audience (TFANA) which was performed in March 2007, at The Swan Theatre, part of the Royal Shakespeare Company. Abraham's relatively low-profile film career subsequent to his Academy Award has been held by many as an example of the so-called Oscar jinx. So linked is Abraham with the phenomenon of winning an Oscar and yet failing to maintain the trajectory toward a high-level film career that, according to film critic Leonard Maltin, it is referred to in Hollywood circles as the F. Murray Abraham syndrome.[4] Abraham rejects this notion and once told an interviewer:
In the same interview, Abraham said:
Abraham most recently made a guest appearance on the popular television series Saving Grace, on which he played an angel, Matthew. [edit] Personal lifeAbraham has been married to Kate Hannan since 1962; they have two children.[5] He taught Theater at Brooklyn College. [edit] Work[edit] Filmography
[edit] Theatre credits
[edit] Awards and nominations[edit] Theatre
[edit] Film
[edit] In popular cultureIn The Simpsons episode "Homer Simpson in: "Kidney Trouble"," Homer rushes home to see Abraham on Inside the Actors Studio and not stopping for a bathroom break, consequently costing his father his kidneys. In the season six episode of Monk "Mr. Monk and His Biggest Fan" Abraham is an object of obsession of the character Marci Maven. [edit] References
[edit] External links
Categories: 1939 births | Actors from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania | American film actors | American stage actors | American television actors | Assyrian Americans | Best Actor Academy Award winners | Best Drama Actor Golden Globe (film) winners | Brooklyn College faculty | Arab Americans | Italian Americans | Living people | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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