Peter Falk

Biography

Date of Birth 16 September 1927, New York City, New York, USA Date of Death 23 June 2011, Beverly Hills, California, USA Birth Name Peter Michael Falk Height 5' 6" (1.68 m) Peter Michael Falk is a two-time Academy Award-nominated, six-time Emmy Award-winning American actor, best known for his role as Lt. Columbo in the television series Columbo. Falk's unusual gaze is due to a glass eye that he has had for most of his life. Peter Falk attended Ossining High School in Westchester County, NY and was president of his class. After graduating, he 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. Gaining a Masters degree in public administration at Syracuse University in 1953, he applied unsuccessfully for a job with the CIA before becoming a management analyst with the Connecticut State Budget Bureau in Hartford. After 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, and the same year 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 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 possessed a keen mind and invariably solved his cases by paying close attention to tiny inconsistencies in a suspect's story, hounding them until they confessed; he merely put on a good show of being dim-witted so that the criminals and even his colleagues would be more at ease around him. Columbo's signature technique was 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 always brought to light the key inconsistency. The role won Falk five Emmy Awards and a Golden Globe. Falk was a close friend of independent film director John Cassavetes and appeared in Cassavetes's films Husbands, A Woman Under the Influence, and a cameo appearance at the end of Opening Night. Cassavetes guest-starred in the Columbo episode "Étude in Black." Falk is also known for his roles in several films, including his performance as a possible ex-CIA agent of dubious sanity in the Arthur Hiller comedy The In-Laws. He also starred in such films as The Great Race, The Princess Bride, Wim Wenders' Wings of Desire (cast as himself) and the 1963 mega-comedy It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World. He also played Guy Gisborne in the 1964 Robin Hood spoof Robin and the 7 Hoods. In 1998, Falk returned to the New York stage to star in an off-Broadway production of Arthur Miller's Mr. Peters' Connections. Falk wears an ocular prosthetic ("glass eye"). His right eye was surgically removed at the age of three because of a malignant tumor. He married Alyce Fayo on April 17, 1960 and has two daughters, Catherine (who is a real life private investigator) and Jackie. They were divorced in 1976 and on December 7, 1977, he married Shera Danese. Falk's most recent role was a brief appearance in the Nicholas Cage thriller film Next.