Barry Primus

Barry Primus, born February 16, 1938, in New York, New York, is an American actor, director, and writer whose career has spanned stage, television, and film. A member of the Actors Studio, he has also taught acting and directing at institutions including the American Film Institute, the Lee Strasberg Theatre and Film Institute, UCLA, Columbia University, Loyola Marymount University, and The Maine Media Workshops in Maine.

Primus devoted the first decade of his professional life primarily to stage work, appearing on Broadway between 1959 and 1979. His Broadway credits include The Nervous Set, After the Fall, The Changelings, The Creation of the World and Other Business, and Teibele and Her Demon. During this period he also accumulated early television experience, appearing in series such as The Defenders, East Side/West Side, and The Virginian.

His film career began with The Brotherhood, shot in Manhattan and released in 1968. Subsequent film appearances include Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up to Me (1971), Boxcar Bertha (1972), Autopsy (1975), Heartland (1979), The Rose (1979), Night Games (1980), Absence of Malice (1981), and Guilty by Suspicion (1991). On television, he held a recurring role on Cagney and Lacey from 1982 to 1988, playing Sergeant Dory McKenna, a fellow police officer and the boyfriend of Christine Cagney, whose drug problem affects his work on the force.

Primus expanded his behind-the-camera work after serving as second unit director on The Rose (1979). In 1992 he directed his first theatrical feature, Mistress, a comedy-drama set within the Hollywood film industry. His more recent screen appearances include Jackson, a cameo in Righteous Kill alongside Al Pacino and Robert De Niro, American Hustle, Grudge Match, and The Irishman. Primus has been married to choreographer Julie Arenal for over fifty years.