Birth Name : Abraham Charles Vigoda
Height : 6' (1.83 m)
Mini Biography
Tall, dour-faced and slouch-shouldered character actor who has proved himself in both gritty dramatic roles and as an actor with wonderful comedic timing. Vigoda was the son of a Lower East Side tailor.abe vigoda skeleton abe vigoda band abe vigoda tessio abe vigoda old abe vigoda fish.abe vigoda fish air france no way down.vampire weekend He made his first stage appearance at the age of 17 and plodded away in small theatre shows for over 20 years. For the majority of filmgoers, Vigoda first came to prominence in The Godfather (1972) as the double-crossing Tessio, pleading with Robert Duvall to get him off the hook "for old times' sake." He also appeared in its sequel.
Vigoda also appeared in a few non-descript TV films before landing the plum role of Sgt. Phil Fish on the brilliant sitcom "Barney Miller" (1974). Perhaps his best known role, Sgt. Fish proved popular enough to be spun off to his own (short-lived) series "Fish" (1977).
With his long face and unusual looks, Vigoda remained in high demand in mafioso-type roles, and for a while in the mid-1980s, he was mistakenly believed to have been dead, leading producers to remark, "I need an Abe Vigoda type actor," not realising Vigoda was still alive and well. The 1990s and beyond became busy again for him, with appearances in North (1994), The Misery Brothers (1995), A Brooklyn State of Mind (1998), and Crime Spree (2003). Still acting in his eighties, Abe Vigoda is continually surprising audiences with his entertaining style.
Actor. Born on February 24, 1921, in New York, New York. With his gravelly voice and sunken eyes, Abe Vigoda has been a popular character actor for more than four decades. The son of a tailor, he grew up on New York City’s Lower East Side. Vigoda started acting as a teenager and studied his craft at the American Theatre Wing.
After decades as a struggling actor, Vigoda became to attract the public’s attention in the 1960s. He landed a few notable stage roles, including a part in Harold Pinter’s The Man in the Glass Booth in 1968. But his big break came in a form of a film role. He won the part of Salvatore “Sal” Tessio, the traitorous mobster in Francis Ford Coppola’s epic about the Corleone crime family, The Godfather (1972). The film, which starred Al Pacino and Marlon Brando, was a huge success both commercially and critically. Vigoda reprised his role for the sequel, The Godfather, Part II (1974).
In 1975, Vigoda took on another memorable role as Detective Phil Fish on the situation comedy Barney Miller. The show starred Hal Linden as the title character, a police captain in New York City and followed his precinct’s comical misadventures. Vigoda was a hit as a run-down, mopey, and almost retired detective. The character was so popular, in fact, that he got his own show in 1977 entitled Fish. The new series looked at the private side of Detective Fish’s life as he and his wife moved from the city to a new home where they took care of several foster children. The show had a short run, ending in 1978.
While his character Fish always appeared sluggish and on his last legs, Vigoda himself was healthy and an avid jogger. So it is difficult to imagine his reaction to his reported death in the early 1980s. According to an article in The New York Times, the mix-up started with a 1982 People magazine item that identified the actor as “the late” Abe Vigoda. Despite the rumor, he was very much live and working. He appeared in several films, including Cannonball Run II (1984) with Burt Reynolds and Look Who’s Talking (1989) with John Travolta and Kirstie Alley. Returning to prime time, he made guest appearances on such shows as Fantasy Island, MacGyver, Murder, She Wrote, and Law & Order. Vigoda also had parts on the daytime dramas, As the World Turns and Santa Barbara.
More recently, Vigoda lent his distinctive voice to the animated film Farce of the Penguins (2006) as well as several video games based on the Godfather trilogy. He is also a frequent guest to the television talk show Late Night with Conan O’Brien.
Vigoda was married to Beatrice Schy from 1968 to the time of her death in 1992. They had one child together, a daughter named Carol.
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