Bob Balaban

Actor

• Born: August 16, 1945
• Place of Birth: Chicago, Illinois

Contribution: Bob Balaban is an accomplished actor, director, and producer and is perhaps most remembered by fans for his role as the NBC executive on the television sitcom Seinfeld. He has also appeared numerous times in Christopher Guest’s signature ensemble mockumentary films.

Background

Robert Elmer Balaban was born on August 16, 1945, in Chicago, Illinois. His parents were Elmer Balaban, who was part-owner of the Balaban and Katz chain of movie theaters that operated in the Chicago area, and Eleanor, a former Broadway actress. Balaban’s uncle, Barney Balaban, had been president of Paramount Pictures, and his grandfather, Sam Katz, was a vice president at MGM (Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer).

With such a prestigious pedigree, there was little question as to what Balaban would do with his life. He was bitten by the acting bug when he was only six and was soon making his own films with his father’s eight-millimeter camera. Balaban performed in numerous shows during his high school years, and at sixteen, he began studying improvisation with Chicago’s legendary Second City troupe.

After high school, Balaban attended Colgate University and then transferred to the New York University (NYU) film school. While at NYU, he got his first major professional acting job, playing the role of Linus in the original off-Broadway production of You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown in 1967. Balaban also made his Broadway debut during his NYU years when he appeared in a production of Neil Simon’s Plaza Suite, which would lead to his first big break in the film industry.

Career

Film and stage director Mike Nichols directed Balaban in Plaza Suite and was impressed with his performance. Nichols asked the young actor to play the role of fighter pilot Captain Orr in his upcoming film Catch-22. Balaban accepted and officially began to fulfill his familial destiny in Hollywood.

While he carved out a film and television career in the 1970s, Balaban remained equally committed to stage acting, most notably playing the son of actor Ted Knight in Some of My Best Friends (1977). In 1978, he also appeared as Óssip, the ninety-five-year-old servant in The Inspector General, a performance for which he received a Tony Award nomination in 1979.

In 1977, Balaban played his first high-profile film role, appearing as an interpreter for a French UFO researcher on the hunt for extraterrestrial life in director Steven Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Over the next few years, Balaban worked diligently to expand his acting profile, playing characters such as district attorney Elliot Rosen in Absence of Malice (1981) and Dr. Chandra, the creator of HAL 9000, in 2010, the 1984 follow-up to 2001: A Space Odyssey.

It was around this time that Balaban began making his first forays behind the camera, directing several television movies, including The Brass Ring (1983) and Penn and Teller’s Invisible Thread (1987), as well as episodes of television series such as Tales from the Darkside and Amazing Stories. His first opportunity to direct a feature film came in 1989 with Parents, which starred actor Randy Quaid and centered on a 1950s suburban family struggling to cope with life in the atomic age.

In 1992, Balaban took on what has since been referred to as his most memorable role: Russell Dalrymple, the NBC executive on the hit sitcom Seinfeld who wavers on whether to approve Jerry Seinfeld and George Costanza’s television pilot. Between 1992 and 1993, Balaban appeared in five episodes as Dalrymple, who was based in part on real NBC chief Warren Littlefield. Balaban would later play Littlefield more directly in the 1996 film The Late Shift, which dramatized the feud between Jay Leno and David Letterman over who would succeed Johnny Carson as host of The Tonight Show.

Just after his Seinfeld stint, Balaban returned to directing with the dark romantic comedy My Boyfriend’s Back (1993). He followed that in 1994 with The Last Good Time, a project on which Balaban served as writer, producer, and director.

Despite the increasingly diverse nature of his professional life, Balaban never strayed far from acting. In 1996, he joined director Christopher Guest’s ensemble cast for the mockumentary Waiting for Guffman. Balaban played Lloyd Miller, a high school music director who is tasked with helping far-off-Broadway director Corky St. Clair put together a stage show celebrating Blaine, Missouri’s 150th anniversary. Over the years, Balaban’s collaboration with Guest continued with appearances in other mockumentary films, including Best in Show (2000), A Mighty Wind (2003), and For Your Consideration (2006).

One of Balaban’s greatest successes as a producer came in 2001, when he teamed with director Robert Altman to make Gosford Park, a murder mystery set in the English countryside of the 1930s. Balaban also played Morris Weissman, a Hollywood producer looking to shoot a film at a sprawling aristocratic estate. Gosford Park received an Academy Award nomination in 2002 for best picture and won the Oscar for best original screenplay.

Throughout the 2000s and 2010s, Balaban continued to keep busy, directing episodes of The Twilight Zone (2002–3) and Nurse Jackie (2011–12), acting in Capote (2005) and No Reservations (2007), and producing The Exonerated (2005) and Beautiful Hills of Brooklyn (2008), among many other projects. In 2012, he narrated director Wes Anderson's Moonrise Kingdom, and in 2013, he appeared as a therapist in an episode of the HBO series Girls.

In 2014, Balaban had a role alongside an ensemble cast in the Oscar-winning film The Grand Budapest Hotel. On television, he was part of the main cast of the first season (2018) of Condor on the Audience network, and the following year he had a main role in the Netflix series The Politician.

Balaban appeared in several episodes of the BBC series The Chair and played Uncle Nick in The French Dispatch in 2021. After that, he made appearances on shows Space Force (2022) and played roles in such films as 80 for Brady (2023) and Asteroid City (2023).

Impact

Balaban has spent decades working on both sides of the camera, which has propelled him to a level of one of Hollywood’s most prolific and successful personalities. His vast and diverse body of work, including his recurring supporting roles in television, has made him a familiar face to moviegoers and television viewers alike.

Personal Life

Balaban married Lynn Grossman in 1977. They have two daughters, Mariah and Hazel.

Bibliography

Adams, Sam. “Bob Balaban on a Four-Decade Career, Translating for Truffaut, and Moonrise Kingdom.” A.V. Club. Onion, 15 June 2012. Web. 24 June 2013.

"Bob Balaban." IMDb, 2024, www.imdb.com/name/nm0000837. Accessed 20 Sept. 2024.

Dana, Rebecca. “Bridgehampton Bob Balaban Does Special Thing with Hoe.” Observer.com. New York Observer, 31 July 2006. Web. 24 June 2013.

Klemesrud, Judy. “Bob Balaban—He’s Making a Career of Projecting Intelligence.” New York Times. New York Times, 10 Jan. 1982. Web. 24 June 2013.

Lodge, Sally. “Q & A with Bob Balaban.” Publishers Weekly. PWxyz, 2 Oct. 2012. Web. 24 June 2013.

Ollivier, Debra. “Bob Balaban on the Magic of Wes Anderson’s Moonrise Kingdom.” Huffington Post. TheHuffingtonPost.com, 1 June 2012. Web. 24 June 2013.