Edward Herrmann

Edward Kirk Herrmann (July 21, 1943 – December 31, 2014) was an American actor, director, and writer born in Washington, D.C., to Jean Eleanor (née O'Connor) and John Anthony Herrmann. Of German and Irish descent, he grew up in Grosse Pointe, Michigan, and graduated from Bucknell University in 1965, where he was a member of Phi Kappa Psi. He subsequently studied acting at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art on a Fulbright Fellowship.

Herrmann's stage career began with an early appearance in the U.S. premiere of Michael Weller's Moonchildren at the Arena Stage in Washington, D.C., in November 1971. He then moved with the production to New York City, making his Broadway debut in 1972. His Broadway work over the following decades included The Deep Blue Sea, The Philadelphia Story, Plenty, and Mrs. Warren's Profession. His performance as Frank Gardner in the 1976 revival of Bernard Shaw's Mrs. Warren's Profession earned him the Tony Award for Best Featured Actor in a Play at the 30th Tony Awards. He received a second Tony nomination, for Best Actor in a Play, for Plenty at the 37th Tony Awards in 1983. His Broadway appearances spanned from 1972 through 1998.

Beyond Broadway, Herrmann's stage work extended to other prominent venues. In 1985, he co-directed and performed at the Williamstown Theater Festival in Not About Heroes, portraying Siegfried Sassoon alongside Dylan Baker as Wilfred Owen. In 1988, he appeared in a New York production of Julius Caesar as Gaius Cassius Longinus, a role he pursued after tiring of suit-wearing parts and finding Cassius the most complex of the available characters. From 1988 to 1989, he starred opposite Alec Guinness in the London West End production of A Walk in the Woods, which opened at the Comedy Theatre in November 1988 under the direction of Ronald Eyre. The play centered on a fictional relationship between a Soviet diplomat and an American negotiator who made a private arms control arrangement during a walk outside Geneva in 1982, with Herrmann and Guinness sharing the stage uninterrupted for approximately two hours.

On television, Herrmann became widely recognized for his portrayal of Franklin D. Roosevelt in the miniseries Eleanor and Franklin (1976) and its follow-up Eleanor and Franklin: The White House Years (1977), both of which earned him nominations for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Limited or Anthology Series or Movie. He reprised the role in the 1982 film musical Annie. He also starred as Captain Steven J. Newsome, an army surgeon suffering from PTSD, in a 1980 episode of M*A*S*H, and played Alger Hiss in the 1984 PBS docudrama Concealed Enemies. In 1987, he portrayed Grant Stayton III in Garry Marshall's Overboard and Max in Joel Schumacher's The Lost Boys. He received Primetime Emmy nominations in 1986 and 1987 for two guest appearances as Father Joseph McCabe on St. Elsewhere. In 1995, he portrayed Herman Munster in the Fox television film Here Come the Munsters and played Harrison Beacher, father of Tobias Beecher, on Oz. His guest work on The Practice brought him the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Guest Actor in a Drama Series at the 51st Primetime Emmy Awards in 1999. From 2000 to 2007, he portrayed Richard Gilmore on The WB's Gilmore Girls, a role series creator Amy Sherman-Palladino had designated as her first choice for Herrmann. He also appeared for two episodes in 2007 as Dr. Norman Shales on ABC's Grey's Anatomy.

Herrmann's film career included roles in Warren Beatty's Reds (1981), Woody Allen's The Purple Rose of Cairo (1985), Oliver Stone's Nixon (1995), Martin Scorsese's The Aviator (2004), and Chris Rock's I Think I Love My Wife (2007). The cast of Nixon earned a Screen Actors Guild Award nomination for Best Ensemble in a Motion Picture at the 2nd Screen Actors Guild Awards. He was additionally known as a narrator for historical programming on The History Channel and in PBS productions such as Nova, and served as a spokesman for Dodge automobiles during the 1990s. Herrmann died on December 31, 2014.