Jon Polito

Jon Raymond Polito, born December 29, 1950, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, was an American actor whose career in film, television, and theater spanned 35 years and encompassed more than 220 credits. The son of John and Delaida "Dee" Polito, he grew up in Philadelphia alongside an older sister, Rosemary Simpson, and an older brother, Jack Polito, who worked as an animator. Polito developed his interest in performance at West Philadelphia Catholic High School for Boys before pursuing formal theater training at Villanova University.

Polito's stage work brought him to Broadway between 1982 and 1984, where his credits included Death of a Salesman and The Curse of an Aching Heart. His theatrical achievements extended off Broadway as well, earning him an Obie Award in 1980. It was a New York stage production of Death of a Salesman, in which he played Howard Wagner, that first brought him to the attention of filmmakers Joel and Ethan Coen.

The Coen brothers approached Polito to play a character called The Dane in their 1990 film Miller's Crossing, but after reading the script he declined, stating he would accept only the role of Italian gangster Johnny Caspar. The Coens auditioned other actors before ultimately casting Polito, requiring him to read the entire role cold. For their next film, Barton Fink (1991), they offered him the part of Lou Breeze, a role written specifically for him, but again he turned it down, this time expressing interest in playing film producer Jack Lipnick. Actress Frances McDormand persuaded him to accept the Lou Breeze role. Polito went on to appear in three additional Coen brothers productions: The Hudsucker Proxy (1994), in which he played an eccentric businessman; The Big Lebowski (1998), where he portrayed a private detective; and The Man Who Wasn't There (2001), in which he played a flirtatious salesman.

Beyond his work with the Coens, Polito accumulated a wide range of film credits, including The Rocketeer, The Crow, and Gangster Squad. In Tim Burton's 2014 film Big Eyes, starring Amy Adams and Christoph Waltz, he portrayed hungry i nightclub impresario Enrico Banducci in a substantial supporting role.

On television, Polito was cast as Detective Steve Crosetti in the crime drama Homicide: Life on the Street, a role he initially hesitated to pursue because accepting it would require him to relocate from Los Angeles to Baltimore. Series co-creators Barry Levinson and Tom Fontana had originally conceived the character as a Polish-American detective but rewrote the role as an Italian named Steve Crosetti before casting Polito. He held the part through the first two seasons before the producers, under pressure from NBC to broaden the show's audience, wrote his character out at the end of Season 2. Polito publicly criticized the decision, an action he later said he regretted. The dispute with co-creator Tom Fontana led to the Crosetti character being killed off early in Season 3, which prompted further public complaints from Polito. By 2005, he acknowledged regret over how he had handled the situation and confirmed that he and Fontana had reconciled; the Crosetti character subsequently returned as a spirit in Homicide: The Movie. Earlier in his television career, Polito had also appeared as Phil Bartoli in the first season of Crime Story.

His professional recognition included the Maverick Spirit Award at the Cinequest Film Festival in 2005, presented in acknowledgment of his body of work in film and television, and the Best Actor in a Short Film award at the Hollywood Reel Independent Film Festival in 2012. In his personal life, Polito married fellow actor Darryl Armbruster on October 16, 2015, fifteen years after the two first met. Polito died on September 1, 2016, at the City of Hope National Medical Center, where he had been receiving treatment for multiple myeloma. He was 65 years old.