Michael Glaser

Paul Michael Glaser, born Paul Manfred Glaser on March 25, 1943, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, is an American actor, director, and writer whose career has extended across five decades. The youngest child and only son of Dorothy and Samuel Glaser, he was raised in Brookline and Newton. His father, an MIT graduate, was a prominent Boston architect who designed a synagogue in Rhode Island. Though the family observed major Jewish holidays, including Glaser's bar mitzvah, they did not practice Shabbat. Glaser attended the Buckingham Browne & Nichols School through 1961, then completed high school at the Cambridge School of Weston. He went on to study theater and English with a minor in architecture at Tulane University, where he was a member of Sigma Alpha Mu fraternity and shared a room with future film director Bruce Paltrow, graduating in 1966. He subsequently earned a Master of Fine Arts degree in acting and directing from Boston University in 1967.

Glaser made his Broadway appearance in 1969 in Butterflies Are Free. His film acting debut came in 1971 when he was cast as Perchick in the musical film Fiddler on the Roof. He first appeared on television in Love Is a Many Splendored Thing and went on to guest in series including The Waltons, The Streets of San Francisco, and Kojak. His most prominent acting role came with the ABC series Starsky & Hutch, which ran for four seasons from 1975 to 1979, in which he portrayed Detective Dave Starsky opposite David Soul. In addition to acting in the series, he wrote and directed five of its episodes.

Following Starsky & Hutch, Glaser shifted increasing focus toward directing. He directed the 1987 film The Running Man, starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, and the 1992 film The Cutting Edge, which became a cult classic. His other directorial film credits include Band of the Hand (1986), The Air Up There (1994), and Kazaam (1996), on which he also served as producer and story writer. He directed the television movie Amazons in 1984 and helmed episodes of Miami Vice, Judging Amy, Robbery Homicide Division, and Las Vegas. Glaser returned to film acting in 2003 in Something's Gotta Give, playing Diane Keaton's ex-husband, and made a brief cameo in the 2004 film adaptation of Starsky & Hutch, in which the character of Starsky was portrayed by Ben Stiller.

In the early 2000s, Glaser played Captain Jack Steeper on the NBC series Third Watch, appearing in that role from 2004 to 2005. He guest starred in the October 1, 2009, episode of The Mentalist, titled "The Scarlet Letter," and had a minor role in Criminal Minds. Between 2013 and 2019, he appeared as Alan in multiple episodes of Ray Donovan. In April 2018, Glaser held his first American solo exhibition of paintings and digital illustrations at Cosmo Lofts in Hollywood, a show he titled "Act III" to reflect his emergence as a visual artist as a third stage of his career following acting and directing.

Glaser married Elizabeth Glaser in 1980. In August 1981, she contracted HIV through a blood transfusion during the birth of their first child, Ariel. The infection went undetected for four years, at which point testing revealed that Elizabeth, Ariel, and the couple's son Jake were all HIV positive. Ariel died shortly after her seventh birthday. Elizabeth Glaser died on December 3, 1994. Glaser later married Tracy Barone, who adopted Jake, then ten years old. The couple had a daughter named Zoe. Glaser filed for divorce from Barone in June 2007.