LOS ANGELES -- Jon Polito, the raspy-voiced character actor whose more than 200 credits ranged from Homicide: Life on the Street and Modern Family to the Coen Brother films Barton Fink and The Big Lebowski, has died.
Polito died Thursday at City of Hope Hospital in Duarte, Calif., according to his manager, Maryellen Mulcahy. Polito was 65 and was being treated for multiple myeloma, Mulcahy said Friday. He is survived by his domestic partner, Darryl Armbruster.
A native of Philadelphia, the short, mustachioed Polito became one of the busiest TV and movie actors of the past three decades, averaging several projects a year since the mid-1980s. He worked in crime stories (Homicide, The Gangster Chronicles), drama (Flags of Our Fathers), comedies (The Freshman, Modern Family) and in the Coens' genre-defying projects. He also was an award-winning stage actor, winning an Obie in 1980 for his performances with two different theater companies.
Mulcahy said he continued to act right up to the end of his life.
Even if you didn't know his name, you probably saw his face, whether as the "private snoop" confronting Jeff Bridges in The Big Lebowski or as the agitated landlord with the strands of hair across his forehead in the "Reverse Peephole" episode of Seinfeld.
On the NBC drama Homicide: Life on the Street, Polito played fussy, beleaguered Baltimore police detective Steve Crosetti. Partnered with Meldrick Lewis (played by Clark Johnson), Crosetti was on the force only for the first two seasons of the series' seven-season run in the 1990s.
On several episodes of Modern Family, Polito played the business archrival of Jay Pritchett (series regular Ed O'Neill).
Metro on 09/03/2016