Charles Grodin

According to his son, Nicholas Grodin, he died at his home in Wilton, Connecticut, from bone marrow cancer.

Born Charles Sidney Grodin in Pittsburgh, on April 21, 1935, he was the son of a wholesale dry goods seller who died when he was 18.

Grodin was drawn to acting after seeing the 1951 film “A Place in the Sun” with Elizabeth Taylor and Montgomery Clift, which led him to pursue an acting career.

He studied at the University of Miami but later dropped out and returned to Pittsburgh, performing at the Pittsburgh Playhouse during the summer. While he struggled to land a role in New York, Grodin worked as a cab driver, postal clerk and watchman while studying acting during the day.

After appearing on television and stage early in his career—with small roles in “Rosemary’s Baby” and “Catch 22”—Grodin landed his breakout role in 1972 as Lenny Cantrow in “The Heartbreak Kid,” based on the true story of Bruce Jay Friedman.

Three years later, he appeared on Broadway in Bernard Slade’s romantic comedy, “Same Time, Next Year,” which is about a man and a woman—married to other people—who have met for an annual romantic rendezvous for over 20 years.

In 1978, Grodin played a scheming lawyer in Warren Beatty’s “Heaven Can Wait.” The same year, he won an Emmy Award as one of several writers of a TV special about Paul Simmon.

A decade later, Grodin starred opposite Robert De Niro in 1988’s “Midnight Run.” De Niro, who plays a bounty hunter, tracks down Grodin’s character after skipping bail for embezzling $15 million from the mob.

Grodin would later star in the popular family movies “Beethoven” and “Beethoven’s 2nd” in the early 1990s. In 1994, he left Hollywood for more than a decade to focus on his family in Connecticut.

In 2006, Grodin returned to the big screen as Zach Braff's know-it-all father-in-law in The Ex. More recently, he was in films “An Imperfect Murder” and “The Comedian,” as well as the TV series “Louie.”

Grodin is survived by his second wife, Elissa Durwood, and their son, Nicholas, as well as his daughter, Marion, from his first marriage.