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Dan Hedaya
Hedaya at the Carney Awards in 2016
Born	(1940-07-24) July 24, 1940 (age 84) New York City, U.S.
Alma mater	Tufts University
Occupation	Actor
Years active	1970–present

Dan Hedaya (born July 24, 1940) is an American actor. He often plays sleazy villains or wisecracking supporting characters. He has had supporting roles in films such as Commando (1985), Clueless (1995), and Mulholland Drive (2001).

Early life

Hedaya was born in New York City, to a Sephardic Jewish family from Aleppo, Syria. Hedaya was raised in Bensonhurst. While a student at Tufts University, he began performing at the campus theater. He worked as a junior high school teacher for many years before deciding to pursue acting full-time. He studied acting at HB Studio in New York City.

Career

Alongside a successful career in the movies, Hedaya has appeared in several TV roles, including Carla Tortelli's ex-husband Nick on the sitcom Cheers and its short-lived spinoff The Tortellis. He played the estranged father of Mallory Keaton's boyfriend, Nick, on the sitcom Family Ties. More recently, he played an Italian-American priest in the controversial and quickly cancelled NBC series The Book of Daniel. Adding to his list of television credits is his performance as the long-lost father of Adrian Monk on Monk. He also guest starred in 1997 and 2005 as a wisecracking lawyer on the medical drama ER.

In films, Hedaya has played the evil dictator and the secondary antagonist Arius in 1985's Commando and Mel Horowitz, the father of Alicia Silverstone's Cher, in the 1995 film Clueless. He played Julian Marty, a cuckolded husband who plots his wife's murder in the first Coen Brothers film, Blood Simple. His resemblance to Richard Nixon led to his being cast as the former president for the film Dick. Hedaya appeared in several episodes of the television series Hill Street Blues as a corrupt, bigamist cop during the series' first season. During the 1980s Hedaya also appeared in the television series Miami Vice.

Filmography

Film

Television

References

1. "Today in History". AP News. The Associated Press. July 24, 2021. Retrieved June 21, 2023. Actor Dan Hedaya is 81.
2. "Philadelphia Rings a Bell FOR 'First Wives Club' Actor". Jewish Exponent. October 3, 1996. Archived from the original on October 25, 2012. Retrieved December 10, 2007.
3. ^ Weinraub, Bernard (November 14, 1995). "After 20 Years, Dan Hedaya Is Fading Out of Anonymity". The New York Times. Retrieved December 10, 2007.
4. Zenner, Walter P. (2000). A Global Community: The Jews from Aleppo, Syria. Wayne State University Press. ISBN 0-8143-2791-5.
5. ^ Schleier, Curt (October 28, 1999). "A Night at the Sephardic Film Festival". The Jewish Journal. Retrieved June 15, 2009.
6. "HB Studio - Notable Alumni | One of the Original Acting Studios in NYC". Retrieved August 5, 2019.

External links

• Dan Hedaya at IMDb

• 1940 births
• Living people
• 20th-century American male actors
• 20th-century American Sephardic Jews
• 21st-century American male actors
• 21st-century American Sephardic Jews
• American people of Jewish descent
• Male actors from Brooklyn
• American male film actors
• American people of Syrian-Jewish descent
• American Mizrahi Jews
• American male television actors
• Jewish American male actors
• People from Bensonhurst, Brooklyn
• Tufts University alumni
• Jews from New York (state)