Latest news with #HarttoHart
Pink Villa
21-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Pink Villa
Who Was George Wendt? All About Star of Long-Running Sitcom Cheers As He Passes Away at 76
Trigger Warning: Mention of death. George Wendt, who was most famous for his role as Norm Peterson on Cheers, passed away on Tuesday. He was 76. Wendt died in his sleep at home on May 20, 2025. His publicist, Melissa Nathan, had confirmed the news in a statement, per People. Wendt was born in 1948 in Chicago. He was the eighth of nine children. Actor Jason Sudeikis is his sister Kathryn's son. Wendt was expelled from the University of Notre Dame. He later worked for his dad's real estate business. He then graduated from Rockhurst College. He trained at Chicago's Second City theater in 1974. There, he met and married actress Bernadette Birkett. They wed in 1978. They had three kids: Hilary, Joe, and Daniel. Wendt faced difficulties early on in his career as a comedian. He was even fired and quit Second City as well. Despite adversity, he made appearances on television and movie screens. He guest-starred on Taxi, Hart to Hart, and more. Some of his early film roles include Airplane II: The Sequel, My Bodyguard, and Jekyll and Hyde... Together Again. These roles paved the way for him. In 1982, he was hired for Making the Grade. It was canceled after six shows. Later that year, he appeared on Cheers as Norm Peterson. The series turned out to be a huge hit. His character made a total of 275 shows. Norm turned out to be one of the show's most memorable parts. Wendt won six Emmy nominations for the role. He became a household name with the performance. Following Cheers, Wendt worked on numerous productions such as Seinfeld, The Simpsons, and Portlandia. He also made a brief star appearance in The George Wendt Show. Although it was only for one season, it was a show of his comedy background. Wendt trod the stage of Broadway and regional theater. Some of his character appearances were Edna Turnblad in Hairspray and Santa Claus in Elf. In 2023, he appeared on The Masked Singer. He also joined his Cheers co-stars at the Emmy Awards. In the wake of his passing, the actor is remembered as a loving family man and cherished friend. His family has requested privacy at this time. Nathan told the outlet, "George's family confirmed the news of his death early Tuesday morning, announcing he died peacefully in his sleep while at home. Her statement continued, "George was a doting family man, a well-loved friend and confidant to all of those lucky enough to have known him. He will be missed forever. The family has requested privacy during this time." George Wendt is survived by his wife and children.
West Australian
20-05-2025
- Entertainment
- West Australian
Beloved Cheers star George Wendt dead at 76
Actor George Wendt, who once played the ever-loyal Norm on Cheers, died Tuesday morning at his home at the age of 76, his family confirmed in a statement through his publicist. 'George was a doting family man, a well-loved friend and confidant to all of those lucky enough to have known him,' the statement said. 'He will be missed forever.' WATCH THE VIDEO ABOVE: Cheers star George Wendt dead at 76. Wendt was one of TV's most recognizable faces after appearing in more than 260 episodes of the popular Boston bar-set sitcom. His character, Norm, was a jovial beer lover who sat at the same stool at the bar, which shared the same name as the show. Norm was a dedicated patron of the bar 'where everybody knows your name', proving the adage true when the bar would call out 'Norm!' when he walked in. A Chicago native, Wendt's career began at The Second City comedy theater. He joined the improvisational group after dropping out of the University of Notre Dame with 0.0 grade-point average, according to his Second City biography . Wendt returned to higher education to study economics, however, from Rockhurst College in Kasnsas City, Missouri. He revisited some of his favorite old haunts with the Kansas City Star in 2016. 'I remember going to see Second City (in Chicago) when I was in college,' Wendt told the paper. 'It looked for all the world like a bunch of young men and women goofing off onstage, and I was pretty sure they got paid. So I thought, wow, if I could do that.' Comedy may run in the family as Wendt's nephew is Ted Lasso creator Jason Sudeikis. Sudeikis was also a member of The Second City before joining the cast of NBC's Saturday Night Live. A representative for Sudeikis did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Wendt's death. Wendt was cast in guest starring roles in the late 1970s and early 1980s on shows such as Hart to Hart and Making the Grade. But it was in 1982 when Wendt got his big break with the role of Norm Peterson on Cheers. The long-running Cheers, which aired from 1982 to 1993, also starred Ted Danson, Rhea Pearlman, Woody Harrelson, Kirstie Alley, Shelley Long and Kelsey Grammar. Wendt was nominated for six Emmys during his tenure on Cheers , though he never took home the winged statuette. Following the end of the show, Wendt had a short-lived series called the The George Wendt Show where he played a mechanic with a radio show. The actor also starred in several movies throughout his career and made even small moments stand out, such as the 1994 film version of The Little Rascals. Wendt played a man selling lumber when the mischievous children were trying to rebuild their clubhouse.
Perth Now
20-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Perth Now
Beloved Cheers star dead at 76
Actor George Wendt, who once played the ever-loyal Norm on Cheers, died Tuesday morning at his home at the age of 76, his family confirmed in a statement through his publicist. 'George was a doting family man, a well-loved friend and confidant to all of those lucky enough to have known him,' the statement said. 'He will be missed forever.' WATCH THE VIDEO ABOVE: Cheers star George Wendt dead at 76. Wendt was one of TV's most recognizable faces after appearing in more than 260 episodes of the popular Boston bar-set sitcom. His character, Norm, was a jovial beer lover who sat at the same stool at the bar, which shared the same name as the show. Norm was a dedicated patron of the bar 'where everybody knows your name', proving the adage true when the bar would call out 'Norm!' when he walked in. A Chicago native, Wendt's career began at The Second City comedy theater. He joined the improvisational group after dropping out of the University of Notre Dame with 0.0 grade-point average, according to his Second City biography. Wendt returned to higher education to study economics, however, from Rockhurst College in Kasnsas City, Missouri. He revisited some of his favorite old haunts with the Kansas City Star in 2016. 'I remember going to see Second City (in Chicago) when I was in college,' Wendt told the paper. 'It looked for all the world like a bunch of young men and women goofing off onstage, and I was pretty sure they got paid. So I thought, wow, if I could do that.' George Wendt has died after a long career in film and television including his iconic role as Norm Peterson on popular sitcom Cheers. Credit: Ira Mark Gostin / AP Comedy may run in the family as Wendt's nephew is Ted Lasso creator Jason Sudeikis. Sudeikis was also a member of The Second City before joining the cast of NBC's Saturday Night Live. A representative for Sudeikis did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Wendt's death. Wendt was cast in guest starring roles in the late 1970s and early 1980s on shows such as Hart to Hart and Making the Grade. But it was in 1982 when Wendt got his big break with the role of Norm Peterson on Cheers. The long-running Cheers, which aired from 1982 to 1993, also starred Ted Danson, Rhea Pearlman, Woody Harrelson, Kirstie Alley, Shelley Long and Kelsey Grammar. Wendt was nominated for six Emmys during his tenure on Cheers, though he never took home the winged statuette. Following the end of the show, Wendt had a short-lived series called the The George Wendt Show where he played a mechanic with a radio show. The actor also starred in several movies throughout his career and made even small moments stand out, such as the 1994 film version of The Little Rascals. Wendt played a man selling lumber when the mischievous children were trying to rebuild their clubhouse.
NBC News
20-05-2025
- Entertainment
- NBC News
George Wendt, who played Norm in 'Cheers,' dies at age 76
Actor George Wendt, who once played the ever-loyal Norm on "Cheers," died Tuesday morning at his home at the age of 76, his family confirmed in a statement through his publicist. "George was a doting family man, a well-loved friend and confidant to all of those lucky enough to have known him," the statement said. "He will be missed forever." Wendt was one of TV's most recognizable faces after appearing in more than 260 episodes of the popular Boston bar-set sitcom. His character, Norm, was a jovial beer lover who sat at the same stool at the bar, which shared the same name as the show. Norm was a dedicated patron of the bar 'where everybody knows your name,' proving the adage true when the bar would call out 'Norm!' when he walked in. A Chicago native, Wendt's career began at The Second City comedy theater. He joined the improvisational group after dropping out of the University of Notre Dame with 0.0 grade-point average, according to his Second City biography. He was cast in guest starring roles in the late 1970s and early 1980s on shows such as "Hart to Hart" and "Making the Grade." But it was in 1982 when Wendt got his big break with the role of Norm Peterson on "Cheers." The long-running "Cheers," which aired from 1982 to 1993, also starred Ted Danson, Rhea Pearlman, Woody Harrelson, Kirstie Alley, Shelley Long and Kelsey Grammar. Following the end of the show, Wendt had a short-lived series called the "The George Wendt Show" where he played a mechanic with a radio show. The actor also starred in several movies throughout his career and made even small moments stand out, such as the 1994 film version of "The Little Rascals." Wendt played a man selling lumber when the mischievous children were trying to rebuild their clubhouse.
The Guardian
04-04-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Clive Revill obituary
No one who saw Clive Revill, who has died aged 94, on stage or screen thought he was anything less than a superb actor. However, for one who enjoyed such a distinguished career, he was surprisingly little known to the general public. It was as though he operated under the radar. He was twice nominated for a Tony award on Broadway, worked three times in startlingly different productions with the great stage director Peter Brook, and twice with the film director Billy Wilder. But his career did not gather momentum once he moved to Los Angeles in the late 1970s, and his last major Broadway appearance, as a 'weirdly colourful' (according to one critic) nemesis to Donald Sutherland's professor in an Edward Albee adaptation of Nabokov's Lolita in 1980, was commercially disastrous. The pilot show he went to make in Hollywood did not generate the hoped-for television series, and he thereafter made a string of guest appearances in episodes of Columbo (starring Peter Falk), Hart to Hart (with Robert Wagner and Stefanie Powers), Murder She Wrote (with Angela Lansbury) and Star Trek: The Next Generation. After leading roles with the Royal Shakespeare Company, at the Chichester Festival theatre and on Broadway, he lent his great power as a leading character actor to such original British television writing as Nigel Kneale's Bam! Pow! Zap! (1969), a bleak satire on cinematic violence, Alun Owen's The Piano Player (1972) and David Hare's first film as both writer and director, Licking Hitler (1978), about the black propaganda unit broadcasting to Germany during the second world war. This period marked his career pinnacle. Revill was stocky and pugnacious, with a Mr Punch-style nose, piercing blue eyes and red hair, physical attributes that were disguised on stage as he usually played much older than his years. He was born in Wellington, New Zealand, the son of Eleanor (nee Neel) and Malet Revill, and was educated at Rongotai College and Victoria University in Wellington. He trained as an accountant but took a career swerve into theatre when he played Sebastian in a 1950 production of Twelfth Night in Auckland. He came to Britain, training at the Old Vic school before, remarkably, making a Broadway debut as Sam Weller in The Pickwick Papers in 1952. He then returned to Britain and played for two years at the Ipswich Rep and made a London debut in 1955 at the Arts Theatre in Peter Hall's production of a Vivian Ellis children's musical, Listen to the Wind. He played a wicked butler, spiriting away three children from their East Anglian nurse to the gypsies; Ronnie Barker was the Gypsy Man. His first television role, a leading one, was in a family business saga, The Makepeace Story (1955), directed by Tony Richardson for the BBC (John Osborne and Maggie Smith, also making TV debuts, had walk-on parts). The big break came with an invitation to play two seasons, from 1956 to 1958, at the Shakespeare Memorial theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon, where his roles included the First Player to Alan Badel's Hamlet, Barnardine (the prisoner who refuses to wake up for his own execution) in Measure for Measure, Cloten in Cymbeline, and Trinculo in Brook's production of The Tempest with John Gielgud as Prospero; this spectacularly designed show also played a season at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane. In the following year, Brook cast him as third lead in a delightful musical, Irma La Douce (1958), starring Elizabeth Seal and Keith Michell, with a score by the French composer Marguerite Monnot and book and lyrics by the British trio of David Heneker, Monty Norman and Julian More. Revill was a jack-in-the-box barman and played the role for two years at the Lyric before going to New York in 1960 and winning a Tony nomination for his performance. His second Tony nomination came three seasons later when he played Fagin in Lionel Bart's hit musical Oliver! (Ron Moody had introduced the role in London). In 1964, he joined the RSC at the Aldwych theatre to play Jean Paul-Marat in Brook's sensational production of Marat/Sade (with Patrick Magee, Glenda Jackson and Ian Richardson) and, his greatest performance, Barabas in Clifford Williams's white-walled Mediterranean revival of Marlowe's The Jew of Malta ('As for myself, I walk abroad a-nights, and kill sick people groaning under walls. Sometimes I go about and poison wells …'). He never returned to Stratford, though. Over the next 10 years, Revill made a string of interesting, enjoyable movies: supporting Laurence Olivier and Noël Coward in Otto Preminger's Bunny Lake is Missing (1965); Warren Beatty and Susannah York in Kaleidoscope (1966); as a Scots orderly and a fake sheikh in Joseph Losey's Modesty Blaise (1966), with Monica Vitti and Dirk Bogarde; and as one of Oliver Reed's 'moral' gang of killers, infiltrated by a journalist (Diana Rigg), in Basil Dearden's The Assassination Bureau (1969). Back on stage in Chichester in 1968, he played Caliban in The Tempest, the general in Peter Ustinov's The Unknown Soldier and His Wife, and Mr Antrobus in Thornton Wilder's The Skin of Our Teeth. For Wilder, he supported Robert Stephens and Colin Blakely in The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes (1970), now a cult classic, and won a Golden Globe nomination as a flustered hotel manager, Carlo Carlucci, in Avanti! (1972), a black comedy of hidden corpses and seduction in the sunshine, starring Jack Lemmon and Juliet Mills. He returned to the RSC, and Broadway, in 1975 when he took over as Moriarty in William Gillette's Sherlock Holmes starring John Wood, and he succeeded George Rose on a US national tour of the musical The Mystery of Edwin Drood. He voiced the Emperor Palpatine in the Star Wars film The Empire Strikes Back in 1980, and his later film work consisted mainly of voiceovers in animated series, cartoons and video games. His great passion was golf, and he also held a pilot's licence. Two marriages ended in divorce. Revill is survived by a daughter, Kate, from his second marriage, in 1978, to Suzi Schor. Clive Selsby Revill, actor, born 18 April 1930; died 11 March 2025
