Eisenberg performed in several Broadway productions between appearances as the defense lawyer Roger Kressler on NBC’s long-running police drama “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit.”
Ned Eisenberg, a character actor known for his work on popular shows including “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit” and “Mare of Easttown,” died at his home in the Jackson Heights section of Queens on Sunday. He was 65.
The cause was cholangiocarcinoma, a cancer of the bile duct, and ocular melanoma, according to a statement from his agent, Jeanne Nicolosi, issued on his family’s behalf.
Eisenberg was a New York character actor whose roles in film, theater and television spanned the past four decades on Broadway and in Hollywood.
Fans of the NBC police procedural “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit” may best remember him as the defense lawyer Roger Kressler, a recurring character on the long-running drama. From 1999 to 2019, he appeared in two dozen episodes of the show — mostly as Kressler, but twice early on in other roles, according to IMDb. He also appeared in other series in the “Law & Order” franchise, playing different roles.
Ned Eisenberg was born on Jan. 13, 1957, in the Bronx. He grew up in the Riverdale section of the Bronx, where he attended Riverdale Junior High School.
In 1975, he graduated from what is now the Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts, in Manhattan, where he studied acting.
He began his professional theater career in Neil Simon’s “Brighton Beach Memoirs” and appeared on Broadway as Truffaldino in Julie Taymor’s “The Green Bird” (2000) and as Uncle Morty in Bartlett Sher’s “Awake and Sing!” (2006), according to Nicolosi.
In a New York Times review of “The Green Bird,” Eisenberg and other cast members were credited with bringing “a balletic grace” and “antic shtick” to the performance, in which he and Didi Conn played “a Punch-and-Judy pair of sausage makers.”
He performed in lead roles in theaters around the Northeast including the Theater for a New Audience, New York City Center and the Williamstown Theater Festival.
He was an early member of the Naked Angels Theater Company along with Kenneth Lonergan, Frank Pugliese and Joe Mantello. The actors Rob Morrow, Mary Stuart Masterson, Nancy Travis and Gina Gershon were also among the founding members of the group, which was started in 1986 to serve as a “creative home for new voices.”
In 2009, he played Iago in a Theater for a New Audience production of “Othello.” In a review for The Times, Charles Isherwood wrote that Eisenberg’s performance was “decked out in small, witty flourishes,” noting that “the bitter half-smile with which Iago looks on at the waste he has wrought in the final scene says everything about his shriveled soul.”
In supporting roles throughout his career, Eisenberg worked with Academy Award-winning directors and filmmakers.
In 2004, he played the boxing manager Sally Mendoza in Clint Eastwood’s “Million Dollar Baby,” which starred Hilary Swank and won the Oscar for best picture. Eisenberg played the photographer, Joe Rosenthal, in “Flags of Our Fathers,” another film by Eastwood, about the six men who raised the flag at the Battle of Iwo Jima during World War II.
Eisenberg also acted in “World Trade Center,” a 2006 Oliver Stone drama about police officers who responded to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, and the 2011 thriller “Limitless,” starring Bradley Cooper.
Last year, he appeared in the Emmy Award-winning HBO drama “Mare of Easttown” as Detective Hauser.
He is expected to return as the manager Lou Rabinowitz in a coming episode of “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel” on Amazon Prime.
He is survived by his wife, the actress Patricia Dunnock, and a son, Lino Eisenberg.
Source: Theater - nytimes.com
