Acting legend Ed Asner passes away at the age of 91 on Sunday, 29 August.
Asner is popular to younger audiences for his role as Carl Fredricksen in Pixar’s Up, where he played the bellicose old man who tied hundreds of balloons to his home and set off on an adventure with Doug the dog and “Junior Wilderness Explorer” Russell. Asner died on Sunday morning surrounded by his family.
Asner’s filmography includes acting in Grace & Frankie, Netflix’s Cobra Kai, voices on American Dad, and The Boondocks. The hugely positive reception to Up reinvigorated interest in the actor’s presence, landing him spots on Law & Order: SVU, The Middle, and Hawaii Five-0.
Asner’s major break as an actor was the Mary Tyler Moore Show, which ran from 1970 to 1977. Asner played the grumpy newsroom producer Lou Grant, Moore’s boss.
Asner bagged three Emmy awards for best-supporting actor for his role on the show. He also won two Emmy awards for his work on Rich Man, Poor Man, and Roots. Asner appeared as Santa in Will Ferrel’s Elf.
Asner told CNN in 2010, “I was shocked to see how adult [Wall-E] was, with the setting in our lives, both present and future, and how they dealt with it. … And then quite relieved to find that the one I was working on, “Up,” how adult it was. If I would fault the producers [and] distributors in any way [it’s that] they didn’t find some better way to immediately make adults realize that this was as much for them as for kids. … My God, that four-minute passage in there detailing their life together. We all wish that our lives could be displayed as beautifully as that one is.”
Asner is survived by his four children.
Here are some of the condolences shared on social media by people across the industry:
