Scarface and Ghostbusters star Harris Yulin dies age 88
Harris Yulin, best known for his roles in Scarface and Ghostbusters II, has died at age 88, his family announced.
The acclaimed actor starred in over 130 productions, including Bean (1997) and the long-running supernatural series Buffy The Vampire Slayer.
His stint as Jerome Belasco, a crime boss on the beloved sitcom Frasier, earned him a Primetime Emmy Award in 1996.
Yulin was not only a prolific star of the silver screen but was also known for his roles on Broadway, including Hedda Gerba and The Diary of Anne Frank.
He died on June 10 in New York City of a cardiac arrest, confirmed his family, according to Deadline.
While he had taken a step back from acting in recent years, Yulin was due to start production in new MGM series American Classic.
He would have had a starring role in the series alongside Kevin Kline and Laura Linney and was reportedly delighted to be taking part. More Trending
Director Michael Hoffman shared: 'Harris Yulin was very simply one of the greatest artists I have ever encountered.
'His marriage of immense technique with an always fresh sense of discovery, gave his work an immediacy and vitality and purity I've experienced no where else. And what he was as an actor, he was as a man, the grace, the humility, the generosity.
'All of us at American Classic have been blessed by our experience with him. He will always remain the beating heart of our show.'
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The Guardian
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Taina Elg obituary
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They were also prone to tell them, as the Times-Tribune did in 1958, that Elg was 'the only Finn of note' at that time in Hollywood and 'the first from her country to become a genuine star of cinema'. In Les Girls, directed by George Cukor and with music by Cole Porter, Elg held her own alongside Mitzi Gaynor and Kay Kendall as dancers in a cabaret troupe headed by Kelly. Based on Constance Tomkinson's reminiscences of her time in the Folies Bergère, and showing each character in succession looking back on the troupe's glory days before acrimony set in, the film's use of contradictory perspectives made it the closest thing to a musical take on Kurosawa's Rashomon. Elg's performance as the apparently lovelorn and suicidal member of the group won her a second Golden Globe. She followed this with Imitation General (1958), in which she was a French farm worker involved with a master sergeant (played by Glenn Ford) who impersonates a dead general to keep up his platoon's morale. The role was played entirely in French until her final words to Ford: 'I … love … you.' 'I'm the only Finnish actress working here,' Elg said the following year. 'Yet of the six films I've made, I have portrayed a French girl four times.' Watusi (1959), in which she was a missionary's daughter rescued by explorers and caught up in their jungle adventures, took the unfashionable route of making her German. In the same year, she starred in the second adaptation of John Buchan's The 39 Steps (and the first in colour) as the netball coach who ends up handcuffed to the hero, here played by Kenneth More, as he is pursued by assassins. Elg was born in Helsinki, and raised in assorted other Finnish locations, including Turku, by her mother, Helena Doroumova, and father, Åke Elg, who were both pianists. During the Finnish-Soviet wars, the family were forced to leave, returning to Helsinki only after the end of the second world war. 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The Guardian
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The nature of the deal with STC remains confidential, with Dunn saying only that STC has received royalties and has retained a 'small investment stake' in the production's ongoing life. That investment stake – just under $500,000 paid in 2023 – was secured through the generosity of STC donors, Dunn said. There is no evidence in the 2024 report that the company has stumped up another $500,000 to retain its stake in the Broadway production but Dunn said a further agreement with Cassel was signed early this year. While the generosity of the company's benefactors in 2023 made the global success of Dorian Gray possible, the largesse of supporters in 2024 was comparatively lean, with its fundraising arm earning just $4.86m compared with the previous year's $5.9m. 'It was a challenging start to the year on a number of issues and I think it's a very competitive environment for philanthropic support,' Dunn said. In November 2023, the company saw the departure of two of its board members and threats of cancelled subscriptions after three actors used a curtain call to signal their support for Palestinians in Gaza during a season of Chekhov's The Seagull. The company issued three apologies over the incident and cancelled one performance. While the protest took place in late 2023, its financial impact would not have been felt until the following year. 'It's an impossible question to answer specifically,' Dunn said. 'You're asking me, how much did we not receive? And that's something just we don't know. Philanthropy is something that people gift to the company each year, and some people may have chosen not to. We can't know exactly what they may have given if they had made a different decision.' Contrary to unconfirmed reports that the STC had lost some loyal followers due to The Seagull protest, subscriptions and casual ticket sales were up by more than 10,000 – from 228,847 in 2023 to 239,951 in 2024. Dunn described Suzie Miller's Ruth Bader Ginsberg play, RBG, One of Many, Joanna Murray-Smith's Julia Gillard work, Julia, and the adaptation of Pip Williams' The Dictionary of Lost Words as standout successes. The resonance the STC-commissioned RBG would have with US audiences is obvious but Dunn said there were as yet no formal discussions with the Michael Cassel Group on a follow-up to Dorian Gray's success on Broadway with RBG. 'But we can certainly see there would be some market appeal,' she said. The Michael Cassel Group did not respond to the Guardian's request for comment. Reflecting on Dorian Gray's overseas triumph, Dunn insisted STC had no regrets about partnering with commercial producers instead of going it alone and reaping the lion's share of the handsome profits. As a government-funded arts organisation, it was not the company's role to embark on risky overseas commercial ventures, she said. 'And taking a show to Broadway and the West End is a very risky proposition. As a not-for-profit theatre company in Australia, what we specialise in is generating new shows … It's about doing the work on creative development and giving space [for] these incredible shows' In 2024 STC received $2.58m from the federal government through Creative Australia and a further $574,000 from Create NSW, which contributed just 6.7% of the company's annual revenue. 'That makes us the most highly leveraged of the not-for-profit arts companies in the country,' she said. The Sydney Theatre Company will announce its 2026 season on 15 September.
