Edward Asner was born to Morris David Asner, the founder and owner of Asner Iron & Metal Company, and his wife Elizabeth "Lizzie" Seliger, of Russian Jewish parentage, in Kansas City.
He attended college and worked various jobs before attending the University of Chicago between 1947 and 1949.
Asner was drafted into the U.S. Army Signals Corps during the Korean War and was posted to France, where he was primarily assigned clerical tasks.
After demobilization, he joined the Playwrights Theatre Company in Chicago and later progressed to New York, where he appeared off-Broadway in the leading role of Jonathan Peachum in Brecht's Threepenny Opera.
He made his Broadway debut in the courtroom drama Face of a Hero, co-starring alongside Jack Lemmon, and began regular TV work in anthology drama.
Asner earned his living as a busy supporting actor from the early '60s, with many notable guest appearances in shows such as Route 66, The Untouchables, The Fugitive, Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, The Invaders, and How the Ghosts Stole Christmas.
He established his reputation as tough, robust, and uncompromising authority figures, and was memorably cast as the brutish patriarch Axel Jordache in Rich Man, Poor Man and as the slave ship's morally conflicted master, Captain Thomas Davies, in Roots.
Asner won a Primetime Emmy Award in 1977 for his role as Captain Thomas Davies in Roots and received seven Emmys in total, all Primetime, and became the only actor to win in both the comedy and drama category for the same role.
He starred as the gruff, snarky newspaper editor Lou Grant in The Mary Tyler Moore Show and later in his own drama series, Lou Grant.
Asner was a controversial figure as an activist and campaigner, engaged in a variety of humanitarian and political issues, and published a book in 2017 titled "The Grouchy Historian: An Old-Time Lefty Defends Our Constitution Against Right-Wing Hypocrites and Nutjobs."
He served twice as President of the Screen Actors Guild between 1981 and 1985 and was critical of former SAG President Ronald Reagan for his Central American policy.
Asner was inducted into the Television Hall of Fame in 1996 and received the Screen Actors Guild's Life Achievement Award in 2002.
He performed extensive work for radio, video games, and animated TV series, voiced the lead character Carl Fredricksen in Pixar's Oscar-winning production of Up, and starred as Santa in Elf.
Edward Asner passed away in Los Angeles at the age of 91 on August 29, 2021.
