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David Margulies

David Margulies built the kind of career that could move comfortably between a Broadway stage, a New York movie set and a long-running television drama. Born in Brooklyn on February 19, 1937, he studied at the City College of New York before making his stage debut in the off-Broadway production Golden 6 in 1958. That same year, he joined the American Shakespeare Festival as an apprentice, a step that led to an Actors' Equity contract for the 1960 theater season. His first Broadway appearance came in the 1973 revival of The Iceman Cometh. That grounding in theatre carried into an extensive screen career. Margulies appeared in films including The Front, All That Jazz, Dressed to Kill, Times Square and Daniel, becoming part of a particularly rich stretch of American filmmaking in the late 1970s and early 1980s. He later appeared in Ghostbusters and Ghostbusters II, as well as Brighton Beach Memoirs, 9½ Weeks, Ishtar, Running on Empty and Ace Ventura: Pet Detective. His later film work included Fading Gigolo in 2013. Television gave Margulies room to turn up across a wide range of series. His credits included Kojak, Tales from the Darkside, Spenser: For Hire, Chicago Hope, NYPD Blue, Northern Exposure and Touched by an Angel. He also appeared in four episodes of Law & Order. One of his most sustained television roles came in The Sopranos, where he played Neil Mink, Tony Soprano's lawyer, across eight episodes. Margulies' filmography reflects a working actor at home in different formats and tones. Whether appearing in a major studio comedy, a New York drama or a television crime series, he brought decades of stage and screen experience to the part. He died in 2016.