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Paul Michael Glaser
I met Paul Michael Glaser in September 2013, after I had seen him as Tevye in the musical Fiddler on the Roof at the Theatre Royal in Nottingham. It was a brilliant show, and Paul signed my programme when I met him afterwards. With his bushy, white beard, he looked so different to when he played Starsky!
Paul Michael Glaser at Uni
Paul Manfred Glaser, (nicknamed Curly), was born in March 1943, in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He was the youngest of three children (he has two older sisters) born to Dorothy and Samuel Glaser, who wasanar
was an architect. Glaser attended the Buckingham Browne & Nichols School and the Cambridge School of Weston before joining Tulane University in New Orleans, from where he graduated with a BA degree. He went on to gain a Masters degree in Englisha
English and theatre from the School of Fine Arts at Boston University, from where he earned a second master's degree in acting and directing in 1967. His first stage appearance came when he was 14, in a production of Amahl and the Night Visitors.
Donald Pleasance & Paul Michael Glaser
in The Man in the Glass Booth
Glaser made his New York stage debut in 1968 in the rock musical Rockabye Hamlet based on the Shakespearian classictragedy.
classic tragedy. He later appeared in a number of Broadway productions, including Robert Shaw's new stage play The Man in the Glass Booth, directed by Harold Pinter. Later in 1968, he played Ralph Stanton in Butterflies
Paul Michael Glaser in the film version of
Butterflies Are Free
Butterflies Are Free, a role he would reprise in the 1972 film
Glaser as Bailey Hughes in Faceless
Paul Michael Glaser in 1970
Paul Michael Glaser as Perchik in
It was at this time that he made his feature film debut in Norman Jewison's
Fiddler on the Roof
film version.
In 1969, the aspiring actor entered television and played Dr Peter Chernak #1 in the CBS soap opera Love Is a Many Splendored Thing (1969-1970). In this he was billed as Paul Michael Glaser, the professional name that he has used ever since.
Jewison's Academy Award-winning film version of the Broadway musical Fiddler on the Roof (1971), in which (billed as just Michael Glaser) he played the revolutionary student Perchik, alongside Topol as Tevye. Israeli actor Assi Dayan was originally cast as Perchik but was replaced when he couldn't handle the English dialect. In the film, blue-eyed Glaser had to wearbro
wear brown-eyed contact lenses to make him look more Jewish, although Glaser is himself Jewish.
After playing Dr. Joe Corelli in the long-running CBS soap Love of Life in 1971, Glaser landed a starring roleas
role as the dark-haired Brooklyn detective David Starsky, in the very popular crime drama series Starsky and Hutch opposite David Soul's Ken 'Hutch' Hutchinson. Glaser also directed several episodes of the show, which was broadcast on the ABC network from April 1975 until May 1979.
In the early '80s, Glaser played psychiatrist Dr. Peter Ross, in director John Huston's mystery/thriller film Phobia (1980). Glaser recalls, "One day I was called by famous director John Huston in person! I couldn't believe couldn't
Glaser & David Soul in Starsky and Hutch
Glaser as Starsky
believe it. He offered me Phobia and I immediately liked it. It was a huge honour and pleasure to work with him."
Four years later, in 1984, Glaser directed his first TV movie, Amazons, a thriller which follows a secret cult of sexy female warriors who plot to dominate the world by killing off important male politicians. A year later, he was nominated for an Emmy award for 'Outstanding Directing in a Drama Series' and a Directors Guild of America award for 'Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Dramatic Series' afterdirecting
Paul Michael Glaser as Ross in Phobia
after directing the episode 'Smuggler's Blues' of the cop drama series Miami Vice.
Glaser made his feature film directorial debut in the crime drama Band of the Hand (1986). Later films he directed include Stephen King's sci-fi thriller starring Arnold Schwarzenegger The Running Man (1987); the ice-skating drama The Cutting Edge (1992); the basketball comedy The Air Up There (1994) and the family comedy based on one of Glaser's own stories Kazaam (1996).
The new millennium saw Glaser appearing in anumber
a number of TV movie roles - as police detective Frank Gugliatta in And Never Let Her Go (2001); serial killer Art Kirkland in Ladies Night (2005) and creepy porn-empire boss Bailey Hughes in Faceless (2006). A notable earlier role was as the escapologist Harry Houdini in the TV movie The Great Houdini (1976).
Band of the Hand dvd
Kazaam dvd
Paul Michael Glaser & Ona Grauer in Ladies Night
Harry Houdini in The Great Houdini
Glaser in an early TV role as escapologist
Glaser as Frank Gugliatta in And Never Let Her Go
Starsky & Hutch spoof
Glaser also featured in Nancy Meyers' romantic comedy film Something's
Something's Gotta Give (2003) starring Jack Nicholson, and had a cameo role in the spoof film version of his classic television show Starsky & Hutch (2004).
Paul Michael Glaser had done little live theatre work since his Broadway days in the late-1960s. However, in November 2007, he starred as Captain Hook in the pantomime Peter Pan at the Churchill
Paul Michael Glaser as Abanazar in Aladdin
Churchill Theatre in Bromley, Kent, whilst in 2008, he played Abanazar in Aladdin at Sunderland's Empire Theatre.
Glaser as Captain Hook in Peter Pan
In 2011, Paul Michael Glaser's book Chrystallia and the Source of Light was published. It is a children's fantasy novel with illustrations by Glaser himself.
In 1980, Glaser married his first wife Elizabeth Meyer, and had two children, daughter Ariel Glaser(bo
In 2013, Paul Michael Glaser played the lead role of Tevye, a poor milkman, in the stage version of Fiddleron
Fiddler on the Roof. The production opened at the Mayflower Theatre in Southampton before touring the UK and Ireland. At the end of April 2014, the show will have played at 21 theatre venues including the Theatre Royal in Nottingham.
Paul Michael Glaser as Tevye in Fiddler on the Roof
Glaser (born in 1981) and son Jake Glaser (born in October 1984). In August 1981, Elizabeth contracted HIV through a blood transfusion while giving birth to Ariel. Elizabeth did not find out about the virus until four years later, when both Ariel and Jake were also found to be HIV positive. Tragically, Ariel died in August 1988 aged 7 from complications resulting from AIDS. Elizabeth Glaser subsequently became an internationally-known crusader for AIDS research. She too died from AIDS in 1994. Glaser married his second wife, producer
Chrystallia
Paul Michael Glaser has signed my programme for
Fiddler on the Roof
producer Tracy Barone in 1996. They had a daughter, Zoe, in 1997, but 10 years later they divorced.
daughter Ariel and their son Jake
Paul Michael Glaser continues to work tirelessly for AIDS charities
Elizabeth & Paul Michael Glaser with their
charities, and is the Honorary Chairman of the Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation which she founded before her death.
Paul Michael Glaser
