Len Cariou

Len Cariou
Cariou in September 2009
Born	September 30, 1939 (1939-09-30) (age 70) Winnipeg, Manitoba

Leonard Joseph "Len" Cariou (born September 30, 1939) is a Canadian actor.

Biography

Early life

Born in St. Boniface, Manitoba, Cariou is the son of Molly Estelle (née Moore) and George Marius Cariou, a salesman.^[1] He grew up and attended school in St Boniface and later in East Kildonan, Manitoba. He attended Holy Cross School Miles MacDonell Collegiate for grades ten and eleven where he directed and starred in the school plays and he later attended St Paul's College.^[2]

Career

Cariou started acting in Winnipeg at the Manitoba Theatre Centre and later at the Stratford, Ontario, tackling classical roles like King Lear, Macbeth, Prospero, Coriolanus, Brutus, Petruchio, Iago, Oberon, and Henry V. He was offered a scholarship at the National Theatre School of Canada in Montreal but, married with a young child and financial responsibilities, he rejected it. Cariou also became a lead actor with the Guthrie Theatre company in Minneapolis in the mid-1960's, where he played Orlando in As You Like It, and Agamemnon in Tyrone Guthrie's compilation of The House of Atreus. In 1968, Cariou made his Broadway debut in The House of Atreus. Two years later he landed his first starring role in Applause, a musical adaptation of the film All About Eve. It earned him a Tony Award nomination as Best Actor in a Musical and won him the Theatre World Award. In 1973 he garnered his second Tony nod for A Little Night Music; he repeated the role for the 1977 film version. Six years later he won both the Tony and a Drama Desk Award for his portrayal of Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber Of Fleet Street in the Stephen Sondheim musical. During these years, Cariou also appeared in a number of benefits, including A Christmas Carol for the Riverside Shakespeare Company in New York, playing Scrooge, with Helen Hayes, Raul Julia, and Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio, directed by W. Stuart McDowell at the Symphony Space in 1985.^[3] His next projects, the Alan Jay Lerner-Charles Strouse musical Dance a Little Closer (1983), Arthur Miller's sole musical, Up from Paradise (1983), and Teddy & Alice (1987) proved to be far less successful.

In 2002, Cariou joined Anne Heche and Neil Patrick Harris as the replacement cast in the award-winning drama Proof. Cariou's film credits include Flags of Our Fathers, About Schmidt, Thirteen Days, The Four Seasons, and the Harold Prince-directed screen adaptation of A Little Night Music with Elizabeth Taylor. He played the father in the 2007 film 1408, and the nominal lead role in The Onion Movie, based on the satirical newspaper. On television, Cariou has appeared in The West Wing, Law & Order, Star Trek: Voyager, The Practice, Ed, The Outer Limits, and multiple episodes of Murder, She Wrote. He had a continuing role in 2006-2007 as power broker Judd Fitzgerald in the Showtime series Brotherhood.

Cariou narrated Major League Baseball's World Series films from 1992-1997. He has recorded a number of books, including several by Michael Connelly, for audiotape release. In 2004, he was elected to the American Theatre Hall of Fame.

References

External links

• Len Cariou at the Internet Broadway Database
• Len Cariou at the Internet Movie Database
• Len Cariou at the Lortel Archives Internet Off-Broadway Database