Jeffrey Tambor (Actor)

Jeffrey Tambor as Jeffrey Payne on Twenty Good Years. (Photo: NBC)

After gaining wide experience in regional theater, this tall, bald character player broke into TV and films playing officious, obsequious or generally uptight and fussy types. After completing graduate studies in theater and teaching acting, Jeffrey Tambor spent a busy 15 years with companies including the Seattle, Milwaukee and South Coast Repertory Theatres, the Old Globe in San Diego, the Actors Theatre in Louisville and Harvard's Loeb Drama Center. He was in his mid-thirties when he made his film debut in the Al Pacino courtroom vehicle, "...And Justice for All" (1979), as an attorney having a complete mental collapse. Some of Tambor's more notable subsequent films include "Mr. Mom" (1983), as Michael Keaton's boss, "City Slickers" (1991), as Billy Crystal's boss, and "Life Stinks" (also 1991), as Mel Brooks' villainous rival. Unafraid to play comic caricatures, he has been very comfortable with outlandish material, be it the horror spoof of "Saturday the 14th" (1981), the black comedy of "At Home with the Webbers" (1993) or the obvious comedy-drama "Heavyweights" (1995).

Most people know Tambor better from his TV work. Beginning as the snobbish neighbor on "The Ropers" (ABC, 1979-80), the sitcom spin-off from "Three's Company", the actor embarked on a series of generally short-lived TV series utilizing his piercing gaze and incisive, effete manner. He was an entirely reasonable choice to succeed Dabney Coleman as the sexist boss on the TV sitcom version of the hit comedy, "9 to 5" (ABC, 1982-83), and he created a number of enjoyably snide voice characterizations for children's cartoons. Two series which didn't last but were quite interesting were the sardonically titled "Mr. Sunshine" (ABC, 1986), with Tambor as a blind English professor who gets by with his brains and acid wit, and "Max Headroom" (ABC, 1987), the highly inventive and influential TV brush with postmodern virtual reality, with Tambor as the frantic head of a newsroom. His most successful series to date has been HBO's "The Larry Sanders Show" (1992-98) with Tambor playing Garry Shandling's vain, buffoonish announcer and sidekick, Hank Kingsley, for the actor will be long remembered and forever hear his catchphrase "Hey now!" called out to him--the actor's delirously endearing performance earned him four Emmy nominations throughout the duration of the series.

In 1998, after "Larry Sanders" went off the air, Tambor saw his big-screen fortunes picking up with a variety of supporting roles--both comedic, dramatic and somewhere in between--in "Meet Joe Black" (1998), "There's Something About Mary" (1998), "Muppets From Space" (1999), "Teaching Mrs. Tingle" (1999), "Girl Interrupted" (1999), "Pollack" (2000) and he had an especially wacky turn as Mayor Augustus Maywho in the live action version of "How the Grinch Stole Christmas" (2000). Tambor delivered a fine performance in a rare leading role when he played a sexually dysfunctional Baby Boomer who swears off love only to fall for a lonely empty nest mom (Jill Clayburgh) in the romantic comedy "Never Again" (2001). The actor also appeared in several small but memorable roles and cameos in films including the bank heist comedy "Scorched" (2002); comic Jamie Kennedy's hip-hop-white-boy romp "Malibu's Most Wanted" (2003); the dismal Ashton Kutcher comedy "My Boss' Daughter" (2003); as Diane Lane's divorce lawyer in "Under the Tuscan Sun" (2003); and as Scott Mechlowicz's father in the raunchy teen comedy "Eurotrip" (2004). Tambor was cast as the demanding but comedically flawed head of the Bureau of Paranormal Research and Defense in the comic book-derived action film "Hellboy" (2004), figuratively locking horns with the red-skinned title character.

The actor's post-"Larry Sanders" career also kept him very busy on the small screen as well. Tambor starred in the short-lived television series "Everything's Relative" (1999), again opposite and was cast in the ABC television 80s nostalgia comedy "That Was Then" (2002), which also co-starred James Bulliard, Tyler Labine and Bess Armstrong and only saw two episodes air. Tambor was next cast in one of his most effective roles as George Bluth, Sr., the imprisoned millionaire patriarch of the dysfunctuional Orange County family at the center of the critically hailed sit-com "Arrested Development" (Fox, 2003- )--Initially planned to appear only in the pilot, Tambor's performance was so well-received by the producers he was immediately added to the cast on a full-time basis, delivering one of his finest comedic characters, as well as George's less successful twin brother Oscar.

Tambor was also a regular on the game show revival of "Hollywood Squares" and served as the series' announcer in the 2002-2003 season, and has lent his melifluous bass to such animated series as "The Lionhearts," David Spade's "Sammy" and "3-South," as well as the voice of King Neptune in "The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie" (2004)

Tambor has also appeared occasionally in TV longforms, beginning with "A Gun in the House" (CBS, 1981). He was a former cocaine addict trying to warn Dennis Weaver away from drug use in "Cocaine: One Man's Seduction" (NBC, 1983) and portrayed press secretary Pierre Salinger in the 1985 CBS miniseries "Robert Kennedy and His Times". More recently, Tambor played the head of an Israeli Mossad unit tracking a heinous Nazi war criminal in "The Man Who Captured Eichmann" (TNT, 1996). He had a prominent role as Mr. Salomone in a pair of family-oriented telepics derived from the charming Kay Thompson-Hilary Knight series of Eloise books, "Eloise at the Plaza" and "Eloise at Christmastime" (both 2003).