Mandy Patinkin

Mandel Bruce "Mandy" Patinkin (pronounced /pəˈtɪŋkɨn/; November 30, 1952, Chicago, Illinois) is an American actor of stage and screen and a tenor vocalist. Patinkin is a noted interpretor of the music of Stephen Sondheim and is known for his work in musical theatre, originating iconic roles such as George Seurat in Sunday in the Park with George, Archibald Craven in The Secret Garden and Burrs in The Wild Party. He has also appeared in television series such as Chicago Hope, Dead Like Me and the first two seasons of Criminal Minds. His most noted film role was the part of Inigo Montoya in The Princess Bride, and he has also appeared in Alien Nation, Yentl, Men With Guns, Run Ronnie Run, Dick Tracy, and The Adventures of Elmo in Grouchland.

After some TV commercial and radio appearances, including the CBS Radio Mystery Theater in 1974, Patinkin had his first success in musical theater, where he played the part of Che in Evita on Broadway in 1979. Patinkin went on to win that year's Tony Award for Best Performance by a Featured Actor in a Musical. He then moved to film, playing parts in movies such as Yentl and Ragtime. He returned to Broadway in 1984 to star in the Pulitzer Prize-winning musical Sunday in the Park with George, which saw him earn another Tony Award nomination for Best Actor (Musical).

Patinkin played Inigo Montoya in Rob Reiner's 1987 The Princess Bride (which Patinkin considers his favorite role), in which he delivers the iconic line, "Hello, my name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die." Patinkin found his studies a huge asset in The Princess Bride, playing the role of the best swordsman in the country, short of the main character, and part of his role included proficiency in fencing, at a professional level. Over the next decade he continued to appear in various movies, such as Dick Tracy and Alien Nation.

On Broadway, over the next decade, he appeared in the Tony Award-winning musical The Secret Garden for 706 performances. He also released two solo albums, titled Mandy Patinkin and Dress Casual.

In 1994, he took the role of Dr. Jeffrey Geiger on CBS' Chicago Hope for which he won an Emmy Award. However, despite the award and the ratings success of the show, Patinkin left the show during the second season, as he was unhappy spending so much time away from his wife. He returned to the show in 1999 at the beginning of the sixth season, but it was later cancelled in 2000. Since Chicago Hope, Patinkin has appeared in a number of films. However, he has mostly performed as a singer, releasing three more albums. In 1995 he guest starred in The Simpsons in the episode "Lisa's Wedding" as Hugh Parkfield, Lisa's future English groom.

In 1998, he debuted his most personal project, Mamaloshen, a collection of traditional, classic, and contemporary songs sung entirely in Yiddish ("Mamaloshen" is Yiddish for "mother tongue"). The stage production of Mamaloshen was performed on and off–Broadway, and has toured throughout the country. The recording of Mamaloshen won the Deutschen Schallplattenpreis (Germany’s equivalent of the Grammy Award).

In 1999 he co-starred in The Adventures of Elmo in Grouchland as the villainous Huxley, who tries to steal Elmo's blanket.

He returned to Broadway in 2000 in the New York Shakespeare Festival's The Wild Party, earning another Tony Award nomination for Best Actor (Musical). Recently, he has also been seen in the Showtime comedy-drama Dead Like Me as Rube Sofer. In 2004, he played a six–week engagement of his one–man concert at the Off Broadway complex Dodger Stages.

In September 2005, he debuted in the role of Jason Gideon, an experienced profiler just coming back to work after a series of nervous breakdowns, in the CBS crime drama Criminal Minds.

Patinkin was absent from a table read for Criminal Minds and did not return for a third season. The departure from the show was not due to contractual or salary matters, but over creative differences. Many weeks before his departure, in a videotaped interview carried in the online magazine Monaco Revue, Patinkin told journalists at the Festival de Télévision de Monte-Carlo that he loathed violence on television and was uncomfortable with certain scenes in Criminal Minds. He also spoke of having planned to tour the world with a musical and wanting to inject more comedy into the entertainment business. In later episodes during the 2007-2008 season, Patinkin's character was written out of the series and was replaced by Special Agent David Rossi, played by Joe Mantegna.

On October 14, 2009, it was announced that Patinkin would be a guest-star on an episode of Three Rivers, which aired on November 15, 2009. He played a patient injured in a car accident who asks the doctors at Three Rivers hospital to pull him off life support so his organs can be donated.

He is starring in the new musical Paradise Found, co-directed by Harold Prince and Susan Stroman, at the Menier Chocolate Factory, London. The musical plays a limited engagement, from May 2010 through June 26.