Dan Ziskie, who made a career out of playing prominent government officials in several hit movies and TV shows, died last month at 80.
His family announced his death in an obituary published online, which said that the stage and screen actor died from arteriosclerotic cardiovascular disease on July 21.
Ziskie was best known for his television roles in Treme and House of Cards, both of which saw him play powerful men in series that went on for several years.
In Treme, a drama set in post-Katrina New Orleans, Ziskie portrayed C.J. Liguori, a prominent financier who funds many of the city’s reconstruction projects after the hurricane.
Ziskie appeared in 26 episodes of the show, with the final season coinciding with his debut as Vice President Jim Matthew in the political thriller House of Cards.
In that role, Ziskie played an ambitious but pliable political titan who is convinced by Frank Underwood (the conniving series lead played by Kevin Spacey) to leave the White House and return to his role as Governor of Pennsylvania.
Years before his major television cameos, Ziskie also had a one-time role on Chappelle’s Show, the polarizing sketch comedy show that helped Dave Chappelle develop his brash comedy style. Ziskie appeared in a 1950s-style black-and-white sketch in which he was the patriarch of a white family with a last name resembling a slur.
Ziskie was born in Detroit and honed his craft in stage productions at the Second City of Chicago.
He made his film debut in 1984 in Very Close Quarters, and went on to appear 30 times on the silver screen. In the aughts and 2010s, his face showed up at some point in just about every primetime cable drama, from Sex and the City to Blue Bloods to Madam Secretary.
In 2015, he played NFL commissioner Paul Tagliabue in the Concussion, a dramatized sports biopic about the doctor who researched the effects of head trauma on the brain.
Ziskie’s last appearance on screen came in the CBS legal drama Bull, in a 2019 episode.
He was an active street photographer of his adopted home of New York City, and he released an eclectic collection titled Cloud Chamber in 2017.
His family described him as “a man of remarkable talent and a keen observer of life.”
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