Jeffrey Tambor

Jeffrey Michael Tambor was born on July 8, 1944, in San Francisco, California, to Eileen Tambor, a homemaker, and Bernard Tambor, a flooring contractor. He was raised in a Conservative Jewish family with roots in Hungary and Ukraine. Tambor completed his secondary education at Abraham Lincoln High School and earned a degree from San Francisco State University, where he studied acting, before receiving a master's degree from Wayne State University.

Tambor began his professional career in repertory theater in Milwaukee before making his Broadway debut in 1976 in the comedy Sly Fox, a production featuring George C. Scott and directed by Arthur Penn. That same year he appeared in Measure for Measure. His Broadway work continued over the following decades, and in the spring of 2005 he joined the revival of Glengarry Glen Ross, playing George Aaronow alongside Alan Alda, Liev Schreiber, and Gordon Clapp, a performance that earned him a Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Ensemble Performance. He later replaced Kelsey Grammer as Georges in the Broadway revival of La Cage aux Folles, beginning February 15, 2011, though he withdrew from the production after the February 24 performance.

On television, Tambor first gained prominence as Jeffrey Brookes, the neighbor of Stanley and Helen Roper in the sitcom The Ropers, which ran from 1979 to 1980. Throughout the 1980s he held a recurring role on Hill Street Blues as a defense attorney who eventually becomes a judge, and from 1987 to 1988 he was a cast member of the ABC prime time series Max Headroom, playing Murray, Edison Carter's editor and key producer. He served as announcer for Hollywood Squares from 2002 to 2003.

His role as Hank Kingsley, the narcissistic sidekick on The Larry Sanders Show from 1992 to 1998, brought him four Emmy nominations, all of which he lost — to Michael Richards for Seinfeld, David Hyde Pierce for Frasier, and his co-star Rip Torn. Beginning in 2003, Tambor starred in Arrested Development as George Bluth Sr. and, in select episodes, as George's twin brother Oscar Bluth. The series ran for three seasons before its cancellation in 2006, returned for a fourth season on Netflix in 2013, and concluded with a fifth season in 2018 and 2019. His work on the show generated two additional Emmy nominations, which he lost to David Hyde Pierce and Brad Garrett respectively.

In February 2014, Amazon premiered Transparent, in which Tambor starred as Maura Pfefferman, a divorced transgender Jewish parent of three. For the role he received the Golden Globe Award for Best Actor in a Television Series — Musical or Comedy and won the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Comedy Series for the show's first season, his first Emmy win across seven career nominations and the first such win by an actor for portraying a transgender character. For the second season he received an additional Golden Globe nomination and won both the Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Comedy Series and the Critics' Choice Television Award for Best Actor in a Comedy Series. Following allegations of sexual misconduct on the set, Tambor announced he would not return for the fifth season, a decision Amazon confirmed on February 15, 2018.

Tambor's film work spans several decades. He appeared as Jay Porter in And Justice for All in 1979, Jinx Latham in Mr. Mom in 1983, Sully in There's Something About Mary in 1998, Mayor Augustus May Who in How the Grinch Stole Christmas in 2000, and Tom Manning in Hellboy in 2004 and its sequel Hellboy II: The Golden Army in 2008. He played Sid Garner across the Hangover trilogy from 2009 to 2013, Francis Silverberg in The Accountant in 2016, and Georgy Malenkov in The Death of Stalin in 2017. His voice acting credits include King Neptune in The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie in 2004, Monsters vs. Aliens in 2009, Tangled in 2010, and Trolls in 2016. His voice performance in The Lionhearts in 1998 earned him a Daytime Emmy Award nomination.

In May 2017, Tambor published a memoir titled Are You Anybody? Tambor has also taught acting classes over the years and was a longtime teaching associate of acting coach Milton Katselas. He and his wife Kasia have a son, Gabriel Kasper, born around 2006, a daughter, Eve Julia, born around 2007, and twin sons, Hugo Bernard and Eli Nicholas, born in October 2009.