Leonardo Cimino

Leonardo Cimino (November 4, 1917 – March 3, 2012) was an American stage, film, and television actor born in Manhattan to Andrea and Leonilda Cimino. His father worked as a tailor. Cimino's Broadway career spanned nearly four decades, from 1946 to 1985, encompassing close to twenty productions, and he remained active across film and television well into his later years.

As a teenager, Cimino enrolled at the Juilliard School to study violin, but his interests broadened during that period to include acting and dance. In 1936, at eighteen, he made his professional stage debut in a supporting role in the world premiere of Gladys Bronwyn Stern's Middle Man in Suffern, New York, a production that starred Ernest Truex. Through the late 1930s and early 1940s, he trained in acting, directing, and modern dance at the Neighborhood Playhouse School of the Theatre. In 1937 he appeared in the original stage production of Marc Blitzstein's The Cradle Will Rock. When the United States entered World War II, Cimino enlisted in the Army in 1942 and participated in the invasion of Normandy, landing with the second wave on June 6, 1944. After returning to the United States in 1945, he resumed his studies at the Neighborhood Playhouse, where he studied dance under Martha Graham.

Cimino made his Broadway debut in 1946 in a revival of Cyrano de Bergerac, which was both starred in and directed by José Ferrer. That production marked the beginning of a recurring professional collaboration between the two. Over the following decades he appeared in numerous Broadway productions, among them The Liars, Mike Downstairs, a 1962 adaptation of E. M. Forster's A Passage to India, and The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui. In 1976 he received a Drama Desk Award nomination for Outstanding Featured Actor in a Play for his portrayal of Jim in Arthur Miller's A Memory of Two Mondays. His final Broadway credit came in 1985 with a revival of The Iceman Cometh.

Alongside his Broadway work, Cimino built a substantial Off-Broadway career. In 1958 he won an Obie Award for his portrayal of Smerdyakov in The Brothers Karamazov. He appeared frequently in Shakespeare productions at the Public Theater, including the role of Egeon in a 1975 staging of The Comedy of Errors that also featured Ted Danson and Danny DeVito. His regional theatre work earned him the 1970 Joseph Jefferson Award for Best Actor in a Principal Role for his performance in The Man in the Glass Booth at the Goodman Theatre in Chicago.

On television, Cimino made guest appearances on programs including Naked City, The Defenders, The Doctors, Kojak, The Equalizer, and Law & Order. From 1981 to 1982 he played Alexei Vartova on the ABC soap opera Ryan's Hope. Among his most recognized screen roles were Abraham Bernstein in the 1983 science fiction miniseries V and the Scary German Guy in the 1987 feature film The Monster Squad.

Cimino died on March 3, 2012, at his home in Woodstock, New York, from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. He was 94 years old.