Paul Reiser is an American comedian, actor, television personality, author, screenwriter and musician. He is most widely known for his role on the long-running television sitcom Mad About You.
Alien franchise credit[]
Aliens[]
Other credits[]
- Diner (1982) - Modell
- Beverly Hills Cop (1984) - Jeffrey Friedman
- Odd Jobs (1986) - Max
- Beverly Hills Cop II (1987) - Jeffrey Friedman
- Cross My Heart (1987) - Bruce Gaynor
- Crazy People (1990) - Stephen Bachman
- The Marrying Man (1991) - Phil Golden
- Family Prayers (1993) - Dan Linder
- The Tower (1993) - Tony Minot
- Mr. Write (1994) - Charlie Fischer
- Bye Bye Love (1995) - Donny
Biographical information[]
Early life[]
Reiser was born in New York City, the son of Helen, a homemaker, and Sam Reiser, a wholesale health food distributor. Reiser attended the East Side Hebrew Institute on the Lower East Side of Manhattan and graduated from Stuyvesant High School in New York City. He earned his bachelor's degree at Binghamton University, where he majored in music (piano, composition). He was active in campus theater productions and founded "The Little Theater That Could", an on-campus community theater organization located in Hinman College, Reiser's dorm community. It was later renamed Hinman Production Company. Reiser eventually found his calling when he performed in New York City comedy clubs during university summer breaks.
Career life[]
After honing his skills as a stand-up comic in New York City, he had a breakout film role in 1982 when he appeared in Diner, a coming-of-age film by Barry Levinson. Reiser's character, Modell, a closet stand-up comedian, effectively brought Reiser's comic abilities to the attention of Hollywood. The film also helped boost the careers of his co-stars Kevin Bacon, Steve Guttenberg, and Mickey Rourke. He followed this success playing a detective in 1984's Beverly Hills Cop, a role he reprised in the 1987 sequel, Beverly Hills Cop II. Reiser also had roles in James Cameron's 1986 movie Aliens where he played the infamous character Burke; in The Marrying Man, and in the comedy Bye Bye Love.
Reiser starred for two years on television as one of two possible fathers of a teenage girl in the sitcom My Two Dads, and later rose to fame in North America as Paul Buchman on Mad About You, a long-running comedy series he helped create in which Helen Hunt co-starred as his wife. He also played piano for the recording of the show's theme song. For his work in Mad About You, Reiser received nominations for an Emmy, a Golden Globe, an American Comedy Award, and a Screen Actors Guild award. In the successful show's final 1999 season, he and Hunt were paid US$1 million ($1.4 million today) per episode. In 2001, Reiser took on a dramatic role as a man desperate to find his birth mother after learning he has a serious illness in the British television movie My Beautiful Son.