Harris Yulin, the veteran stage and screen actor whose career notably included roles in “Scarface,” “Training Day” and “Ghostbusters II,” has died. He was 87.
Yulin died Tuesday of cardiac arrest in New York, his manager Sue Leibman and his family confirmed in a statement to The Times on Thursday. He was “part of the vanguard of a generation who cared passionately about the craft of acting — this deep, lifelong dedication led to extraordinary, resonant performances that were a gift to audiences, the actors he worked with, and the art of acting itself,” said the statement, which also remembered the Los Angeles native as an “avid birder and lover of the sea.”
Born Nov. 5, 1937, Yulin enjoyed a varied screen acting career that spanned multiple decades and spawned more than 100 credits, according to IMDb. In film he portrayed a corrupt Los Angeles official in cahoots with Denzel Washington’s immoral narcotics officer in “Training Day,” a dismissive judge who oversees the court case against the supernatural sleuths in “Ghostbusters II,” and a detective interested in doing business with Al Pacino’s Tony Montana in “Scarface.”
Yulin counted numerous TV series among his credits, including “WIOU,” “Buffy the Vampire Slayer,” “24,” “Nikita” and “Veep.” In the final decade of his life, he also appeared in Netflix series “Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt” and “Ozark.” In 1996 he earned a Primetime Emmy nomination for guest actor in a comedy for his appearance as crime boss Jerome Belasco in the hit NBC series “Frasier.”
Beyond TV and film, Yulin pursued a prolific career on stage with included Broadway productions of “Hedda Gabler,” “The Price,” “The Visit,” and “Watch on the Rhine” and off-Broadway shows of “Hamlet,” “Arts and Leisure” and “Rain Dance.” Throughout his career, Yulin brought his talents to the Court Theater and Goodman Theater in Chicago, the Gate Theatre in Dublin and the Bay Street Theater in New York. Yulin was also a stage director who oversaw productions of several plays, including “The Glass Menagerie,” “The Trip to Bountiful,” “This Lime Tree Bower,” “Men’s Lives” and “The Man Who Came to Dinner.”
Yule was also an instructor who taught at Juilliard, Columbia University and at HB Studio. He continued working on new projects up until his death, including the MGM+ series “American Classic,” starring Kevin Kline, Laura Linney and Jon Tenney. Deadline reported that the series began production on the East Coast and Yulin was preparing to begin shooting his role this week. His role will be recast.
Series co-creator and executive producer Michael Hoffman mourned Yulin in a statement:”[He] was very simply one of the greatest artists I have ever encountered.”
Hoffman, who worked with Yulin on the 2005 film “Game 6,” added: “His marriage of immense technique with an always fresh sense of discovery, gave his work an immediacy and vitality and purity I’ve experienced nowhere else,” Hoffman said. “And what he was as an actor, he was as a man, the grace, the humility, the generosity. All of us at ‘American Classic’ have been blessed by our experience with him. He will always remain the beating heart of our show.”
Yulin is survived by his wife Kristen Lowman, son-in-law Ted Mineo, nephew Martin Crane and godchildren Marco and Lara Greenberg. He was preceded in death by his daughter Claire Lucido. A memorial will be held at a later date.
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