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Peter Falk
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Peter Michael Falk (born September 16, 1927) is a two-time Academy Award-nominated, five-time Emmy Award-winning and one-time Golden Globe award-winning American actor, best known for his role as Lt. Columbo in the television series Columbo.
BiographyEarly lifeBorn in New York City, Falk was the son of Michael Falk, who owned a clothing and dry goods store, and his wife, Madeline (1904-2001), an accountant and buyer. Both of his parents were descendants of Eastern European Jews, however they were not religious. Falk grew up surrounded by the kids of New York’s Italian community. His speaking of New York dialect and his famous role as Lt. Columbo has led some to think incorrectly that he is Italian-American.
Falk attended Ossining High School in Westchester County, New York and was the president of his senior class.
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Peter Michael Falk (born September 16, 1927) is a two-time Academy Award-nominated, five-time Emmy Award-winning and one-time Golden Globe award-winning American actor, best known for his role as Lt. Columbo in the television series Columbo.
BiographyEarly lifeBorn in New York City, Falk was the son of Michael Falk, who owned a clothing and dry goods store, and his wife, Madeline (1904-2001), an accountant and buyer. Both of his parents were descendants of Eastern European Jews, however they were not religious. Falk grew up surrounded by the kids of New York’s Italian community. His speaking of New York dialect and his famous role as Lt. Columbo has led some to think incorrectly that he is Italian-American.
Falk attended Ossining High School in Westchester County, New York and was the president of his senior class. After graduating from high school, Falk joined the United States Merchant Marine as a cook, before completing a Bachelor of Arts in political science at the New School for Social Research in 1951. He also attended Hamilton College in Clinton, New York for three years. Gaining a Masters degree in public administration at Syracuse University in 1953, Falk applied unsuccessfully for a job with the CIA before becoming a management analyst with the Connecticut State Budget Bureau in Hartford.
ActingAfter deciding to be an actor and studying at the White Barn Theatre in Westport, Connecticut, in 1956 at the age of 29, he left his job with the Budget Bureau and moved to Greenwich Village. He made his professional debut Off Broadway in Molière's Don Juan at the Fourth Street Theatre on January 3, 1956. That same year he made his Broadway debut playing an English soldier in Shaw's Saint Joan with Siobhán McKenna. He won an Emmy for "The Price of Tomatoes", a Dick Powell TV drama. Falk has been nominated for a Best Supporting Actor Academy Award twice, for Murder, Inc., and Pocketful of Miracles.
Falk played a cab driver in the all-star comedy film It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World. He also specialized in comical crooks, as in 1964's Rat Pack crime spoof Robin and the 7 Hoods and the 1965 farce The Great Race with Jack Lemmon and Tony Curtis.
ColumboFalk is best known for the title role in the long-running TV series Columbo, a shabby and ostensibly absent-minded police detective. In reality, Columbo possesses a keen mind and invariably solves his cases by paying close attention to tiny inconsistencies in a suspect's story, hounding them until they confess; he merely puts on a good show of being dim-witted so that the criminals and even his colleagues will be more at ease around him. Columbo's signature technique is to exit the scene of an interview, only to stop in the doorway to ask a suspect "just one more thing" (the title of Falk's recent memoir), which often brings to light the key inconsistency. The role won Falk four Emmy Awards and a Golden Globe. Four of Columbo's cases gave Falk the chance to work with his longtime friend, Patrick McGoohan, the latter playing the villain of the episodes.
The actor played the detective over a 35-year span, beginning with the film in 1968.
Subsequent workFalk was a close friend of independent film director John Cassavetes and appeared in Cassavetes' films Husbands, A Woman Under the Influence, and a cameo appearance at the end of Opening Night. Cassavetes in turn guest-starred in the Columbo episode "Étude in Black" (1972).
Falk continued to work in films, including his performance as a possible ex-CIA agent of dubious sanity in the Arthur Hiller comedy The In-Laws. He also appeared in The Princess Bride and in Wim Wenders' Wings of Desire (cast as himself).
In 1998, Falk returned to the New York stage to star in an off-Broadway production of Arthur Miller's Mr. Peters' Connections. His previous stage work included the shady real-estate salesman, Shelley "the Machine" Levine, in a Los Angeles production of David Mamet's prize-winning "Glengarry Glen Ross."
Falk had a brief appearance in the 2007 Nicolas Cage thriller, Next.
Cancer survivorFalk's unusual gaze is caused by a glass eye that he has had for most of his life. His right eye was surgically removed at the age of three because of a malignant tumor.
TV Guide, in a 1970s biography, reported that Falk, as a boy, once removed the glass eye and offered it to a Little League umpire, telling him "You need this more than I do!"
MarriagesFalk married Alyce Mayo on April 17 1960. They had two daughters, Catherine (who is a real life private investigator) and Jackie. They divorced in 1976. On December 7 1977, Falk married actress Shera Danese, who has guest-starred on the Columbo series numerous times.
Selected filmography
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