Dan Hedaya Movies and Career Information

Dan Hedaya (born July 24, 1940) is an American character actor. He often plays sleazy villains or uptight, wisecracking individuals; two of his best-known roles are as a cuckolded husband in the Coen brothers' crime thriller Blood Simple, and the scheming Nick Tortelli on the sitcom Cheers. Hedaya was born in Brooklyn, New York, to a Sephardic Jewish family from Syria. His father immigrated from Aleppo. Hedaya was raised in Bensonhurst, and worked as a junior high school teacher for many years before deciding to pursue acting full-time. Alongside a successful career in the movies, Hedaya has held several TV roles, including Carla Tortelli's ex-husband Nick on the sitcom Cheers and its short-lived spinoff The Tortellis. He played the estranged father of Mallory Keaton's boyfriend, Nick, on the sitcom Family Ties. More recently, he played an Italian-American priest in the controversial and quickly cancelled NBC series The Book of Daniel. Adding to his list of television credits is his performance as the long-lost father of Adrian Monk on Monk. He also guest starred in 1997 and 2005 as a wise cracking lawyer on the medical drama ER. In films, Hedaya has played the evil dictator Arius