Actor Ron Silver Dies At 62

Ron Silver Actor

Actor and political activist, Ron Silver, died this morning at his home in New York at age 62. Read more on Ron Silver’s life and death below.

Ron Silver, 62, had been battling esophageal cancer for the last two years. Ron Silver leaves behind two children, Adam and Alexandra, his parents and his two brothers, and many friends and fans.

Ron Silver was an award-winning actor, and was Emmy-nominated for his role on the television drama “The West Wing.”

“Ron Silver died peacefully in his sleep with his family around him early Sunday morning,” said Robin Bronk, executive director of the Creative Coalition.

Ron Silver was considered a political activist and helped found the Creative Coalition.

New York-based Creative Coalition is an art-oriented political group founded in 1989 by Ron Silver, Alec Baldwin and Susan Sarandon, and others.

Ron Silver, who won Broadway’s 1988 Tony Award for his work in David Mamet’s drama “Speed the Plow,” had been a longtime liberal activist, but after the September 11 attacks became an outspoken supporter of Republican President George W. Bush.

He was a featured speaker at the 2004 Republican National Convention, sometimes called himself a “9/11 Republican” and switched his party affiliation from Democrat to independent.

Ron Silver, 1946 - 2009

Step into Ron Silver's dressing room backstage at the Hollywood Playhouse. There's a black binder lying open on the dressing table; it's packed with clippings on health care. A baseball hat with Chinese lettering rests alongside a book--"Politics Among Nations: The Struggle for Power and Peace"--and nearby is a pamphlet called "Curing U.S. Health Care Ills."

Hardly the light reading one would expect from an actor taking on a 90-minute, one-man show. But neither the actor nor the show--"and" by journalist Roger Rosenblatt--is predictable Hollywood fare.

Ron Silver, at 45, is president of Actors' Equity and won a Tony for his stage performance as slick movie producer Charlie Fox in David Mamet's "Speed-the-Plow." He played the intense lawyer Alan Dershowitz in the film "Reversal of Fortune" and the hapless Holocaust survivor with three wives in "Enemies: A Love Story."

Rosenblatt's play, which opens Wednesday, is a complex monologue about writing, dreams and compromise. Its unnamed hero is a journalist who reflects on risk-taking; journalism is too easy for him, too insignificant. The play ran in New York for a month earlier this year but has been considerably rewritten.

It is a story that, in many ways, was written for Silver. Although playwright and actor did not know each other before, they connected through the words. They fit Silver, he says, and Silver, says Rosenblatt, fit the story.

"The one quality the play required above everything else, since it's a man talking to himself, is a man who is persuasively very smart," says Rosenblatt, editor-at-large of Life magazine. "He can't be acting. Apart from Ron's enormous range of acting skills, you have the sense of a very deep, comprehensive brooding intelligence."

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Ron Silver Actor

Ron Silver Actor Dies