Actor John Mahoney

Ready for a change, Mahoney took acting classes at St. Nicholas Theater that inspired him to quit his day job and pursue acting full time, and after a stage production in 1977, fellow actor John Malkovich encouraged him to join Steppenwolf Theatre. He did so, and went on to win the Clarence Derwent Award as Most Promising Male Newcomer, and, in 1986, Broadway's Tony Award for Best Featured Actor in a Play for his performance in John Guare's The House of Blue Leaves.

He made his film debut in 1980, and has played supporting roles in such films as Suspect and Moonstruck (both 1987 and both starring Cher), Eight Men Out, Frantic and Betrayed (all three 1988), Say Anything... (1989), Barton Fink (1991), The Water Engine (1992), In the Line of Fire (1993), Striking Distance (1993), The Hudsucker Proxy (1994), The American President (1995), Primal Fear (1996), Antz (1998) and The Broken Hearts Club (2000). Although he has often played "good guy" roles, Mahoney has occasionally gone into "bad guy" territory, for example in Reality Bites, in which he played a diva talk show host who torments Winona Ryder's character.

He appeared in Frasier from its inception in 1993 until the final episode in 2004, and received numerous Emmy and Golden Globe award nominations for this role. Incidentally, Mahoney also appeared in an episode of Cheers as an inept jingle writer, including a brief conversation with Frasier Crane (Kelsey Grammer), whose father he would later play.

He also provided the voices for several characters in the animated film Antz (1998), as well as Whitmore in Atlantis: The Lost Empire, General Rogard in The Iron Giant (1999), and Kronk's Papi in Kronk's New Groove (succeeded by Jeff Bennett in The Emperor's New School). In 2007, he provided the voice of Sideshow Bob's father, Dr. Robert Terwilliger Sr. in "Funeral for a Fiend", an episode of The Simpsons. This reunited him with his Frasier co-stars Kelsey Grammer and David Hyde Pierce, who voiced the characters of Sideshow Bob and Cecil, respectively.

Mahoney co-starred as The Old Man in the Broadway revival of the play Prelude to a Kiss at the American Airlines Theater in a limited-run engagement from previews February 17, 2007 through April 29, 2007. He appeared in season 13 of ER as an elderly drag queen in the episode, "Somebody to Love", and in the 2007 romantic comedy film Dan in Real Life, co-starring as the father of Steve Carell and Dane Cook. In March of 2008 he opened in the world premiere of Better Late at the Northlight Theatre. He is also the narrator for Midwest Airlines commercials.

Mahoney lost all traces of his original Mancunian accent while serving in the U.S. Army, but he did resurrect it once on Frasier, while mocking Daphne Moon (played by English actress Jane Leeves) in the episode Look Before You Leap. In 2003, he returned to his home in Oak Park, Illinois, to work with the Chicago Steppenwolf Theatre again.