Fahrid Murray Al-Ahmad Abraham (Arabic: ﻱﻴﺵ ﺞﺜﺙ ﻙﻘﭪ ﭐﭖﺏ) (born October 24 1939) is an Academy Award-winning American actor. He became known during the 1980s, after winning the Oscar for Best Actor for his role in Amadeus, and has since appeared in many roles, both leading and supporting, in films, television, and mainly on stage.

Biography

Early life

Abraham was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, the son of Maryam Bint Al-Ashud, a housewife, and Fahrid Abraham, an auto mechanic. His father was an Assyrian Christian who immigrated from Syria during the 1920s famine; his paternal grandfather was a cantor in the Syriac Orthodox Church. Abraham's mother, one of fourteen children, was an Arab American, the daughter of an immigrant who worked in the coal mines of Western Pennsylvania. Abraham was raised in El Paso, Texas, near the Mexican border, where he was a gang member during his teenage years. He attended the University of Texas at Austin, then studied acting under Uta Hagen in New York City. He began his acting career on the stage, debuting in a Los Angeles production of Ray Bradbury's The Wonderful Ice Cream Suit.

Career

Abraham can be seen as one of the undercover cops along with Al Pacino in Sidney Lumet's Serpico (1973). He also appears very early in All the President's Men as one of the police officers who arrests the Watergate burglars in the offices of the Democratic National Headquarters.

Prior to his acclaimed role in Amadeus, Abraham was perhaps best known to audiences as a talking leaf in a series of television commercials for Fruit of the Loom underwear. He worked with Pacino again in the gangster film Scarface in 1983, playing drug dealer Omar Suarez. Abraham won the Academy Award for Best Actor for his role as Antonio Salieri in Amadeus (1984). After Amadeus he has mainly focused on classical theatre, and has starred in many Shakespearean productions such as Othello and Richard III, as well as many other plays by the likes of Samuel Beckett and Gilbert and Sullivan. He is also known for his roles in The Name of the Rose (1986), where he played Bernardo Gui, nemesis to Sean Connery's William of Baskerville, Woody Allen's Mighty Aphrodite (1995) and Gus Van Sant's Finding Forrester (2000), where he once again played nemesis to Connery.

Abraham has focused on stage work throughout his career, giving notable performances as Pozzo in Mike Nichols' production of Waiting for Godot, Malvolio in Twelfth Night for the New York Shakespeare Festival, and Shylock in The Merchant of Venice for a New York based theatre company called Theatre For A New Audience (TFANA) which has been performed in March 2007 at The Swan Theatre, part of the Royal Shakespeare Company.

Abraham's relatively low-profile film career subsequent to his Academy Award career has been held by many as an example of the so-called "Oscar jinx." So linked is Abraham with the phenomenon of winning an Oscar and yet failing to maintain the trajectory toward a high-level film career that, according to film critic Leonard Maltin, it is referred to in "Hollywood circles as the 'F. Murray Abraham syndrome." Abraham himself rejects this notion. He once told an interviewer, "The Oscar is the single most important event of my career. I have dined with kings, shared equal billing with my idols, lectured at Harvard and Columbia. If this is a jinx, I'll take two." In the same interview, Abraham said, "Even though I won the Oscar, I can still take the subway [in New York] and nobody recognizes me. Some actors might find that disconcerting, but I find it refreshing."

Personal life

Abraham has been married to Kate Hannan since 1962; they have two children. He taught Theater at Brooklyn College.

Popular Culture References

In The Simpsons episode "Homer Simpson in: "Kidney Trouble"," Homer rushes home to see Abraham on Inside the Actors Studio and not stopping for a bathroom break, consequently costing his father his kidneys.

In the season six episode of Monk "Mr. Monk and His Biggest Fan." Abraham is an object of obsession of the character Marci Maven.

Abraham was the subject of the extremely short-lived A&E Network television series Hangin' with F. Murray Abraham. The documentary-style program detailed the actor's repeated attempts to torment James Woods, his self-declared "acting rival." The show gained brief media attention following the broadcast of its third episode, in which Abraham masqueraded about Hollywood dressed as Woods' deceased father. Upon seeing Abraham's disguise, a perplexed Woods declared that his father was alive and well in Hoboken, New Jersey and asked that Abraham "get a hobby and leave him the hell alone." The show was promptly pulled from A&E's fall lineup.

Filmography

Year	Title	Role	Notes
1971	They Might Be Giants	Clyde the usher
1973	Serpico	Detective partner	uncredited
1975	The Prisoner of Second Avenue	Taxi Driver
1976	All the President's Men	Sgt. Paul Leeper, Arresting Officer #1
	The Ritz	Chris
1978	The Big Fix	Eppis
	Madman
1983	Scarface	Omar Suarez
1984	Amadeus	Antonio Salieri	Academy Award for Best Actor
1986	The Name of the Rose	Bernardo Gui
1988	Russicum - I giorni del diavolo		aka The Third Solution
1989	The Favorite	Abdul Hamid	aka Intimate Power
	An Innocent Man	Virgil Cane
	Slipstream	Cornelius (at Museum)
	Beyond the Stars	Dr. Harry Bertram, the Whale Man
	Eye of the Widow	Kharoun
1990	The Bonfire of the Vanities	D.A. Abe Weiss	uncredited
	La Batalla de los Tres Reyes	Osrain	aka Drums of Fire, English title
	Cadence	Capt. Ramon Garcia	uncredited
1991	Mobsters	Arnold Rothstein	aka The Evil Empire
	Money	Will Scarlet
	By the Sword	Max Suba
1993	Last Action Hero	John Practice
	Sweet Killing	Zargo
	Through an Open Window
	National Lampoon's Loaded Weapon	Dr. Harold Leacher
1994	Nostradamus	Scalinger
	Surviving the Game	Wolfe Sr.
	L’Affaire Lucien Haslans		aka The Case
	Jamila (film)>Jamila	Older Seit
	Fresh	Chess Hustler	uncredited
1995	Mighty Aphrodite	Leader
	Dillinger and Capone	Al Capone
	Baby Face Nelson	Al Capone
1996	Children of the Revolution	Josef ‘Uncle Joe’ Stalin
1997	Mimic	Dr. Gates
	Eruption	President Mendoza
1998	Star Trek: Insurrection	Ad’har Ru’afo
1999	Excellent Cadavers	Tommaso Buscetta
	The All New Adventures of Laurel & Hardy in 'For Love or Mummy'	Prof. Covington
	Muppets From Space	Noah
2000	Finding Forrester	Prof. Robert Crawford
2001	Th13een Ghosts	Cyrus Kriticos
	I Cavalieri che fecero l'impresa	Delfinello da Coverzano	aka The Knights of the Quest USA title
2002	Joshua	Father Tardone
	Ticker	Airport Guru	aka The Hire: Ticker
2003	My Father, Rua Alguem 5555	Paul Minsky	aka Josef Mengele – My Father
	Piazza delle cinque lune	Entita	aka Five Moons Plaza - English title
2004	The Bridge of San Luis Rey	Viceroy of Peru
	Peperoni ripieni e pesci in faccia	Jeffrey	aka Too Much Romance... It's Time for Stuffed Peppers – USA title
	Another Way of Seeing Things	Narrator
2006	L’Inchiesta	Nathan	aka The Inquiry – English title
	Quiet Flows the Don	Pantaley
	Il Mercante di pietre	Shahid	aka The Stone Merchant – English title
	A House Divided	Grandfather Wahid
2007	Carnera: The Walking Mountain	Leon See
	Come le formiche	Ruggero	aka Wine and Kisses – English title
	Perestroika	Prof. Gross
2008	BloodMonkey	Professor Hamilton

Theatre credits

• Angels in America
• The Ritz
• Triumph of Love
• Othello
• Landscape of the Body
• Richard II
• Much Ado About Nothing
• The Fantasticks
• Waiting for Godot
• Mauritius
• Oedipus Rex
• Twelfth Night
• The Merchant of Venice
• Almost an Evening

References

External links

• Yahoo! Movies bio
• F. Murray Abraham at IMG Artists