Latest news with #PicketFences'
NBC News
07-04-2025
- Entertainment
- NBC News
Denis Arndt, Tony-nominated star of ‘Heisenberg' and veteran of David E. Kelley TV shows, dies
NEW YORK — Denis Arndt, a character actor and favorite of TV writer and producer David E. Kelley, getting cast in 'L.A. Law,' 'Picket Fences' and 'Chicago Hope,' and later earning a Tony nomination for his Broadway debut at age 77 in a play about mismatched lovers, has died. He was 86. Arndt died 'peacefully in his bed' at his cabin home in Ashland, Oregon, his family announced in an obituary published March 26. It noted that he was born in 1939, the same year 'The Wizard of Oz' came out. 'That was like Dad's life,' it said. 'It started out in black and white and blossomed into a life of color, brilliance, daring adventure and passion. And it was also a little bit trippy, like Oz.' Arndt was a Vietnam veteran helicopter pilot who twice was awarded the Purple Heart and later flew helicopters in Alaska. He turned to acting after moving to Seattle, spending multiple seasons at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival and performing as an early member of the Intiman Theatre in Seattle. His career began in the mid-1980s with roles on the TV shows 'Crime Story' and 'Wiseguy,' and he would spend the 1990s in TV and film, with a highlight being one of the cops interrogating Sharon Stone's character in Paul Verhoeven's 'Basic Instinct.' Making his first and only Broadway appearance at age 77 opposite Mary-Louise Parker, Arndt received acclaim for his performance in 'Heisenberg,' which debuted off-Broadway in 2015 before hitting Broadway a year later. In the play by Simon Stephens, babble-mouthed 42-year-old Georgie from New Jersey randomly meets a bored 75-year-old Irish butcher, Alex, in a London train station and the two begin a strange courtship. The Associated Press was charmed by the performers and Stephens' play: 'He captures new love and old love at the same time, hope and fear, the new world and the old. He's turned the simplest of tales — boy meets girl — into an unexpectedly rich thing with just two chairs, two tables and two actors.' On TV, Arndt was a frequent Kelly collaborator, starting with 'L.A. Law' and then as lawyer Franklin Dell on 'Picket Fences' over four seasons. He also had roles on 'Chicago Hope,' 'Ally McBeal,' 'The Practice,' 'Boston Public,' 'Boston Legal' and 'Mr. Mercedes.' His other small-screen credits include 'Providence, 'The Wonder Years,' 'Murder, She Wrote,' 'Life Goes On,' 'Herman's Head,' 'Touched by an Angel,' 'Grey's Anatomy' and 'The Good Fight.' He is survived by his wife, Magee, and his children, Scott, Tammy, Laurie, Kirsten, Bryce, McKenna and Tanner.
The Independent
07-04-2025
- Entertainment
- The Independent
Denis Arndt, Tony-nominated star of ‘Heisenberg' and veteran of David E. Kelley TV shows, dies at 86
Denis Arndt, a character actor and favorite of TV writer and producer David E. Kelley, getting cast in 'L.A. Law,' 'Picket Fences' and 'Chicago Hope,' and later earning a Tony nomination for his Broadway debut at age 77 in a play about mismatched lovers, has died. He was 86. Arndt died 'peacefully in his bed' at his cabin home in Ashland, Oregon, his family announced in an obituary published March 26. It noted that he was born in 1939, the same year 'The Wizard of Oz' came out. 'That was like Dad's life,' it said. 'It started out in black and white and blossomed into a life of color, brilliance, daring adventure and passion. And it was also a little bit trippy, like Oz.' Arndt was a Vietnam veteran helicopter pilot who twice was awarded the Purple Heart and later flew helicopters in Alaska. He turned to acting after moving to Seattle, spending multiple seasons at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival and performing as an early member of the Intiman Theatre in Seattle. His career began in the mid-1980s with roles on the TV shows 'Crime Story' and 'Wiseguy' and he would spend the 1990s in TV and film, with a highlight being one of the cops interrogating Sharon Stone's character in Paul Verhoeven's 'Basic Instinct.' Making his first and only Broadway appearance at age 77 opposite Mary-Louise Parker, Arndt received acclaim for his performance in 'Heisenberg,' which debuted off-Broadway in 2015 before hitting Broadway a year later. In the play by Simon Stephens, babble-mouthed 42-year-old Georgie from New Jersey randomly meets a bored 75-year-old Irish butcher, Alex, in a London train station and the two begin a strange courtship. The Associated Press was charmed by the performers and Stephens' play: 'He captures new love and old love at the same time, hope and fear, the new world and the old. He's turned the simplest of tales — boy meets girl — into an unexpectedly rich thing with just two chairs, two tables and two actors.' On TV, Arndt was a frequent Kelly collaborator, starting with 'L.A. Law' and then as lawyer Franklin Dell on 'Picket Fences' over four seasons. He also had roles on 'Chicago Hope,' 'Ally McBeal,' 'The Practice,' 'Boston Public,' 'Boston Legal' and 'Mr. Mercedes.' His other small-screen credits include 'Providence, 'The Wonder Years," 'Murder, She Wrote,' 'Life Goes On,' 'Herman's Head,' 'Touched by an Angel,' 'Grey's Anatomy' and 'The Good Fight.' He is survived by his wife, Magee, and his children, Scott, Tammy, Laurie, Kirsten, Bryce, McKenna and Tanner.
Associated Press
07-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Associated Press
Denis Arndt, Tony-nominated star of ‘Heisenberg' and veteran of David E. Kelley TV shows, dies at 86
NEW YORK (AP) — Denis Arndt, a character actor and favorite of TV writer and producer David E. Kelley, getting cast in 'L.A. Law,' 'Picket Fences' and 'Chicago Hope,' and later earning a Tony nomination for his Broadway debut at age 77 in a play about mismatched lovers, has died. He was 86. Arndt died 'peacefully in his bed' at his cabin home in Ashland, Oregon, his family announced in an obituary published March 26. It noted that he was born in 1939, the same year 'The Wizard of Oz' came out. 'That was like Dad's life,' it said. 'It started out in black and white and blossomed into a life of color, brilliance, daring adventure and passion. And it was also a little bit trippy, like Oz.' Arndt was a Vietnam veteran helicopter pilot who twice was awarded the Purple Heart and later flew helicopters in Alaska. He turned to acting after moving to Seattle, spending multiple seasons at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival and performing as an early member of the Intiman Theatre in Seattle. His career began in the mid-1980s with roles on the TV shows 'Crime Story' and 'Wiseguy' and he would spend the 1990s in TV and film, with a highlight being one of the cops interrogating Sharon Stone's character in Paul Verhoeven's 'Basic Instinct.' Making his first and only Broadway appearance at age 77 opposite Mary-Louise Parker, Arndt received acclaim for his performance in 'Heisenberg,' which debuted off-Broadway in 2015 before hitting Broadway a year later. In the play by Simon Stephens, babble-mouthed 42-year-old Georgie from New Jersey randomly meets a bored 75-year-old Irish butcher, Alex, in a London train station and the two begin a strange courtship. The Associated Press was charmed by the performers and Stephens' play: 'He captures new love and old love at the same time, hope and fear, the new world and the old. He's turned the simplest of tales — boy meets girl — into an unexpectedly rich thing with just two chairs, two tables and two actors.' On TV, Arndt was a frequent Kelly collaborator, starting with 'L.A. Law' and then as lawyer Franklin Dell on 'Picket Fences' over four seasons. He also had roles on 'Chicago Hope,' 'Ally McBeal,' 'The Practice,' 'Boston Public,' 'Boston Legal' and 'Mr. Mercedes.' His other small-screen credits include 'Providence, 'The Wonder Years,' 'Murder, She Wrote,' 'Life Goes On,' 'Herman's Head,' 'Touched by an Angel,' 'Grey's Anatomy' and 'The Good Fight.'
New York Times
06-04-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
Denis Arndt, Who Was a First-Time Tony Nominee at 77, Dies at 86
Denis Arndt, a former helicopter pilot whose acting career reached its zenith when he made his Broadway debut at age 77 in the comedy 'Heisenberg' and earned a Tony Award nomination, died on March 25 at his home in Ashland, Ore. He was 86. His wife, Magee Downey, confirmed the death. She said the specific cause was not known. Mr. Arndt built his reputation as a stage actor at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in the 1970s and '80s. He later became a familiar face on television series like 'L.A. Law' and 'Picket Fences' and played one of the detectives who interrogate Sharon Stone in a famous erotically charged scene in 'Basic Instinct' (1992). He first appeared in 'Heisenberg,' a two-character play by Simon Stephens, which the Manhattan Theater Club produced at City Center's Studio at Stage II in 2015. The play transferred to the Samuel J. Friedman Theater on Broadway the next year. Mr. Arndt played Alex, a reserved, 75-year-old Irish-born butcher, who is in a London train station when he is unexpectedly kissed on the neck by Georgie (Mary-Louise Parker), a loud, impulsive and mysterious 42-year-old American. Her boldness ignites a romance. Ben Brantley, reviewing 'Heisenberg' in The New York Times, called Mr. Arndt and Ms. Parker 'the sexiest couple on a New York stage now.' Mr. Arndt, he wrote, 'makes what has to be the most unlikely and irresistible Broadway debut of the year. He lends roiling, at first barely detectable energy to the seeming passivity of a man who, on occasion, finds himself crying for reasons he cannot (nor wants to) explain. But this ostensibly confirmed celibate oozes a gentle, undeniable sensuality.' In an interview with The Times during the run of the play, Mr. Arndt spoke ecstatically about the chemistry he felt onstage with Ms. Parker, who was appearing in her seventh Broadway show. 'I feel compelled to give her my complete attention,' he said. 'I see the goddess. I do. I truly do.' Mr. Arndt, Ms. Parker told The Times, 'is everything I could want — passionate and so smart and so sensitive.' The Heisenberg of the play's title is the Nobel Prize-winning German physicist Werner Heisenberg, known for his uncertainty principle. That principle is not mentioned by the characters, but his name evokes the unpredictability of their romance. Mr. Arndt was nominated for the Tony for best actor in a play in 2017 but lost to Kevin Kline, who won for his performance in the Noël Coward comedy 'Present Laughter.' When Mr. Arndt and Ms. Parker reprised their roles at the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles in 2017, Charles McNulty of The Los Angeles Times wrote, 'Arndt lends poignant majesty to his character's rediscovered sensuality.' Denis Leroy Arndt was born on Feb. 23, 1939, in, Clyde, Ohio, and later moved with his parents and two younger sisters to Spokane, Wash. His father, Bryce, was a railroad switchman, and his mother, Arline, owned a seamstress shop, where she made curtains. He started acting in high school, but after graduating he enlisted in the Army, where he spent about a decade. He trained as a helicopter pilot and later flew missions in Vietnam, receiving two Purple Hearts when his aircraft came under fire. He enjoyed flying — 'You had the machine in your hand, and it became an extension of your central nervous system,' he told The Times — and worked as a commercial pilot in Alaska after his discharge. He studied history at the University of Washington on the G.I. Bill, but he did not graduate and soon began acting in Seattle theaters. In the 1970s, he started a long association with the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, in Ashland. Mark Murphey, who shared the stage with Mr. Arndt in 'Hamlet,' 'Romeo and Juliet' and 'Two Gentlemen of Verona,' said in an interview: 'As an actor, he was in the moment; he was different every time, every night was different. He was just incredibly vital and riveting. He just had that edge.' Mr. Arndt played the lead in 'King Lear,' Eugene O'Neill's 'Long Day's Journey Into Night' and other plays at the festival and often performed at other theaters on the West Coast. He also appeared in Michael Weller's 'The Ballad of Soapy Smith' at the Public Theater in Manhattan in 1984 and 'Richard II' at the Delacorte Theater in Central Park in 1987. In 1988, he left the Oregon festival, where he was playing Hickey in O'Neill's 'The Iceman Cometh,' to join the cast of 'Annie McGuire,' a new sitcom starring Mary Tyler Moore, as her husband, a construction engineer. He had already done some film and television work, but a commitment to a series with a star like Ms. Moore was something new in his career. The Sunday Oregonian newspaper reported at the time that some people at the festival were upset that Mr. Arndt had left. But, he told the newspaper, landing a role in a high-profile network series was a reward for his years of stage work. 'The idea of being invited to play marbles with the big kids is something we all aspire to,' he said. (He would return to the Oregon festival in 2014 as Prospero in 'The Tempest' and in multiple roles in 'The Great Society,' the second of Robert Schenkkan's plays about President Lyndon B. Johnson.) 'Annie McGuire' lasted only 10 episodes, but Mr. Arndt soon became a regular presence on television. He played lawyers in recurring roles on 'L.A. Law,' 'Picket Fences" and 'The Practice' and was seen on 'Boston Legal,' 'Life Goes On,' 'Supernatural,' 'Grey's Anatomy,' 'The Good Fight,' 'How to Get Away With Murder' and 'Mr. Mercedes.' In addition to his wife, Mr. Arndt is survived by two daughters, McKenna Rowe and Bryce Brooks, and a son, Tanner Arndt, from their marriage; three daughters, Tammy, Laurie and Kirsten Arndt, and a son, Scott, from his marriage to Marjorie Arveson, which ended in divorce; and many grandchildren, great-grandchildren and great-great-grandchildren. Mr. Arndt was not the first choice for 'Heisenberg,' but he stepped in quickly when Kenneth Welsh, who was originally cast in the Off Broadway production, left four days before rehearsals were to begin. 'I was prepared for this,' Mr. Arndt told The Los Angeles Times. He added, 'My insight, chemistry, with this woman, her incredible skill — it's too much fun to use all the tools in my box.'
Yahoo
29-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Denis Arndt, Tony-Nominated Broadway Actor Also Known for Numerous TV Roles, Dies at 86
Denis Arndt, who starred in several shows for David E. Kelly including 'L.A. Law,' as well as in the Broadway performance of 'Heisenberg,' has died. He was 86. Arndt's death was announced by his family, who wrote in part, 'He died peacefully in his bed in his beloved cabin home of almost 50 years in Ashland, Oregon; he wouldn't have had it any other way.' 'The year he was born, 1939, the Wizard of Oz came out showing the first movie in color after Dorothy found Oz. That was like Dad's life. It started out in black and white and blossomed into a life of color, brilliance, daring adventure, and passion. And it was also a little bit trippy, like Oz,' the family continued. Arndt debuted as 'L.A. Law' lawyer Jack Sollers during the show's fifth season in 1990. He again played a lawyer on 'Picket Fences' for four seasons and spent the following years in and out of Kelley's productions, including 'Chicago Sky,' 'Ally McBeal,' 'Boston Public,' and 'Boston Legal.' He took on the role of Alex Priest in Simon Stephnens' 'Heisenberg' at age 77. In the play, his character has the opportunity to explore the possibility of love again in his senior years after a woman mysteriously kisses him at a train station. 'He had absolutely given up on love and made his peace with it,' Arndt told Broadway World in 2016. 'Love is a synaptic connection in your brain,' he continued. 'Alex doesn't talk about his emotional response to the world, he sees that as a problem. Alex likes the rational reality of how animals fit together and that cows have a seam.' 'He knows where he is in time,' Arndt also said, 'and he's no pushover. He's not searching for anything, he's there at the end of his life, there's not much time left.' Arndt also added that he liked the character because he could relate to him. 'We're both old men in a society that doesn't have much for old men to do,' Arndt said. 'He likes the rationality of how animals fit together and how he and Georgie fit together. He's almost stoic, not materialistic, certain about the spiritual side because he has a deceased sister he talks to in his dreams.' In addition to his Hollywood career, Arndt's family also wrote, 'Dad was a Vietnam veteran helicopter pilot who was awarded the Purple Heart twice. He went on to fly helicopters in Alaska. After leaving the dangerous life of a helicopter pilot, he moved to Seattle, where a friend persuaded him to audition for a local theatre.' 'Of course, Dad got the main role,' the obituary continued. 'And he was brilliant. He carried his brilliance, passion, and dedication into his second career as an actor, both on stage and on screen. He spent multiple seasons at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival.' 'In his own way, Dad lived his life as a full and generous performance, known for his incredible wit, charm, rebel spirit, irreverence, sense of humor, grittiness, and passion for his art. His legacy, both on and off stage, will live on in the hearts of family, friends, and community members.' Arndt was born on February 23, 1939, in Issaquah, Washington. Following his military service he graduated from the University of Washington and founded the Intiman Theatre in 1972. Denis Arndt is survived by his wife Magee Downey and their three children, Bryce, McKenna and Tanner, as well as by his four children Scott, Tammy, Laurie, and Kirsten, and 'many' grandchildren, great-grandchildren, and great-great-grandchildren. The post Denis Arndt, Tony-Nominated Broadway Actor Also Known for Numerous TV Roles, Dies at 86 appeared first on TheWrap.
