Andrew Robinson

Andrew Jordt Robinson, born February 14, 1942, in New York City, is an American actor and former director of the Master of Fine Arts acting program at the University of Southern California. His middle name, Jordt, honors his grandfather, though he did not incorporate it into his professional credits until the 1996 Star Trek: Deep Space Nine episode "Body Parts." His father, a soldier in World War II, died when Robinson was three years old, after which he and his mother relocated to Hartford, Connecticut, where he was raised by her family. As a young person he became a juvenile delinquent and was sent to St. Andrew's School, a boarding school in Rhode Island.

Robinson attended the University of New Hampshire after high school, but the institution withheld his degree following his participation in picketing the school's Reserve Officers' Training Corps program. He subsequently transferred to The New School for Social Research in New York City, where he earned a Bachelor of Arts in English. Though he originally intended to pursue journalism, he shifted to acting after receiving a Fulbright Scholarship, which he used to attend the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art, where he studied Shakespeare and voice training.

His earliest professional work was as a stage actor and playwright in New York, with his first role in the city coming in the play MacBird. He went on to appear in productions across North America and Europe, including Woyzeck, Futz, Werner Liepolt's The Young Master Dante, and The Cannibals. In 1969, at age 26, he made his first television appearance with a guest role on N.Y.P.D., and in 1971 he transitioned into feature films.

Robinson's film debut came with Dirty Harry in 1971, in which director Don Siegel and Clint Eastwood cast him as the Scorpio Killer after seeing him in a production of Fyodor Dostoevsky's The Idiot. Siegel later noted he chose Robinson because he had the face of "a choir boy." The Scorpio Killer was based in part on the real-life Zodiac Killer, and Robinson drew on known aspects of that killer's personality, including a disturbed sense of humor and a sadistic tendency to taunt pursuers. His portrayal generated death threats following the film's release. Box Office Magazine described his performance as "a good blending of cunning and savagery." The role brought Robinson wide exposure but also led to persistent typecasting in villainous and unstable characters, with film producers reluctant to cast him in heroic parts.

Robinson starred opposite Walter Matthau in Don Siegel's 1973 film Charley Varrick and co-starred as a chauffeur in the 1975 detective drama The Drowning Pool, which starred Paul Newman. He played Frank Ryan on the soap opera Ryan's Hope from 1976 to 1978, earning a Daytime Emmy nomination for the role. In 1978 he stepped back from full-time acting for five years to focus on raising his family in Idyllwild, California, a mountain community approximately 150 miles from Los Angeles. During that period he taught community theatre to middle and high school students and worked as a carpenter. He returned to acting full-time in the mid-1980s.

Among his notable television work in the 1980s, Robinson played President John F. Kennedy in the Twilight Zone revival episode "Profile in Silver" in 1986, and in 1988 he portrayed Liberace in a television biopic, a role he described as one of his favorites. The New York Times noted that he performed well in the leading role. His first lead role in a feature film came with Hellraiser in 1987, in which he played Larry Cotton. He also appeared as a military barber in Child's Play 3 in 1991.

Robinson returned to the stage in 1993 with the Broadway production of Frank Gilroy's Any Given Day, though the play closed after six weeks. That same year, he was cast in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, his first regular television role since Ryan's Hope. He played Elim Garak, a Cardassian tailor and former operative of the Obsidian Order, a character conceived as an enigmatic, darkly comedic foil to Julian Bashir, played by Alexander Siddig. Robinson had originally auditioned for the role of Odo, which went to René Auberjonois, and he nearly declined the Garak role before accepting it for financial reasons. He had little prior familiarity with the Star Trek franchise before being cast. Also in 1993, Robinson was a founding member of The Matrix Theatre Company in Los Angeles.

Robinson began directing television in 1996, starting with the Deep Space Nine episode "Looking for par'Mach in All the Wrong Places." He went on to direct two episodes of Star Trek: Voyager and seven episodes of the courtroom drama Judging Amy, in which his daughter Rachel Robinson appeared as a cast member. Rachel Robinson had also appeared in the Deep Space Nine episode "The Visitor." In 2000, Robinson wrote the novel A Stitch in Time, based on his character Garak, stating that one of his motivations was to achieve complete closure with the character. In 2024, he returned to the role of Elim Garak in Star Trek: Lower Decks. Robinson is married to Irene, whom he met following a production of Springvoices; the two married in 1970. He has two stepsons from his wife's previous marriage and one daughter, Rachel.