Fred Melamed

Fred Melamed is an American actor born on May 13, 1956, in Queens, New York. He was the product of a brief relationship between Nancy Zala, an actress and director, and Stan Silverstone, a British psychoanalyst, and was subsequently adopted by Louis Melamed, a Manhattan television producer, and his wife Syma (Krichefsky) Melamed, a sometime actress. His biological father was a relative of the Adler acting family, which included Luther and Stella Adler. Louis Melamed worked with television pioneer Nat Hiken on productions such as The Phil Silvers Show and Car 54, Where Are You? Melamed attended Hunter College Elementary School, a school for gifted children, and later Riverdale Country School. When he was sixteen, financial difficulties prompted his family to relocate to Hollywood, Florida.

Melamed began his theatrical training at Hampshire College, where he worked with Tina Packer, John Guare, Jean-Claude van Itallie, and members of The Living Theatre. He subsequently enrolled at the Yale School of Drama, where he held a Samuel F. B. Morse College Graduate Fellowship and received a nomination for the Irene Ryan Award, given to the most promising young actors in the United States. While still at Yale, he served as an instructor at the performing arts camp Stagedoor Manor. Following his training, he performed with several resident theatre companies, among them The Guthrie Theater, the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, and The Yale Repertory Theater.

Melamed's Broadway career spans 1980 to 2011. His early Broadway work included the Tony Award-winning production of Amadeus. After that production, he entered what he described as a period of personal darkness, during which he largely stepped away from stage work. He returned to Broadway in 2011 as part of Relatively Speaking, a program of one-act plays in which he originated the role of The Father in Ethan Coen's Talking Cure and the role of Thomas Moran in Elaine May's George Is Dead. Outside of Broadway, he took on the role of Vanya in the Guild Hall production of Uncle Vanya, a performance The New York Times described as excellent and multi-layered.

During his time away from the stage, Melamed built a substantial career as a voice actor, lending his voice to campaigns for Mercedes-Benz, CBS Sports, the USA Network, the Super Bowl, and the Olympic Games, as well as to the Grand Theft Auto video game series. His feature film debut came in Marshall Brickman's 1983 romantic comedy Lovesick, starring Dudley Moore and Elizabeth McGovern. He went on to appear in seven films directed by Woody Allen, a total surpassed among actors only by Diane Keaton and Mia Farrow. Those films include Hannah and Her Sisters (1986), Radio Days (1987), Another Woman (1988), Crimes and Misdemeanors (1989), Shadows and Fog (1991), Husbands and Wives (1992), and Hollywood Ending (2000). During the 1980s he also appeared in Roland Joffé's The Mission (1986), Elaine May's Ishtar (1987), Peter Yates's Suspect (1987) with Cher, Dennis Quaid, and Liam Neeson, The Pick-up Artist (1987) with Robert Downey Jr. and Molly Ringwald, and The Good Mother (1988) opposite Diane Keaton and Liam Neeson.

Melamed achieved wide recognition with his portrayal of Sy Ableman in Joel and Ethan Coen's A Serious Man (2009), a film nominated for Best Picture at the 2010 Academy Awards. For that performance, he shared Film Independent's Independent Spirit Robert Altman Award with the Coen Brothers and the film's ensemble and casting directors. Critics including A. O. Scott of The New York Times, Michael Phillips of the Chicago Tribune, and Roger Ebert each stated that his work merited an Academy Award nomination. New York magazine included the performance among the Best Performances of the Decade, and Empire named Sy Ableman one of the best Coen Brothers characters of all time.

Subsequent film credits include Lake Bell's In a World... (2012), winner of the Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award at the Sundance Film Festival, in which Melamed starred as Sam opposite Kurt Russell and Richard Jenkins; Get on Up (2014), a biographical film about James Brown; Hail, Caesar! (2016), which reunited him with the Coen Brothers alongside George Clooney, Tilda Swinton, and Ralph Fiennes; and Emma Seligman's Shiva Baby (2020). Additional credits from the period include The Dictator (2012) with Sacha Baron Cohen and Ben Kingsley, Bone Tomahawk opposite Kurt Russell and Richard Jenkins, Brawl in Cell Block 99 opposite Vince Vaughn, Lemon (2017), and Dragged Across Concrete.

On television, Melamed starred opposite Maria Bamford in the Netflix comedy Lady Dynamite (2016–2017), playing Bruce Ben-Bacharach. He voiced Gumbald in the animated series Adventure Time from 2017 to 2018, appeared as Todd Davis in Marvel's WandaVision (2021), and played Tom Posorro in Barry from 2022 to 2023. Additional television credits include recurring roles on Curb Your Enthusiasm as Dr. Arthur Thurgood, on The Good Wife as Judge Alan Karpman, and guest appearances on FX's Fargo, Hulu's Casual, Girls, House of Lies, Blunt Talk, New Girl, Childrens Hospital, Benched, Married, Brooklyn Nine-Nine, and Trial & Error, among others. Vulture has named Melamed one of the greatest character actors working today.