Topic: John Mahoney

John Mahoney (born 20 June 1940) is a British actor, known for playing Martin "Marty" Crane, the retired police officer, father of Kelsey Grammer's Dr. Frasier Crane, in the American TV series Frasier (NBC, 1993–2004).

Mahoney, the seventh of eight children, was born in the seaside resort of Blackpool, Lancashire, England – the town to which his mother was evacuated as the Mahoneys' home city of Manchester was heavily bombed during the Second World War. He started school at St Joseph's College, Blackpool. After the war, the Mahoneys moved back to Manchester. Mahoney grew up in the Withington area of the city and discovered acting at the Stretford Children's Youth Theatre. His father, Reg, was a baker. Mahoney moved to the United States as a young man when his older sister, Vera, a war-bride living in rural Illinois, agreed to sponsor him. He studied at Quincy University, Illinois, before joining the United States Army to speed up the citizenship process and to become a U.S. citizen; he received citizenship in 1959. He lived in Macomb, Illinois, and taught English at Western Illinois University in the early 1970s, before settling in Forest Park, Illinois and later in Oak Park, Illinois. He served as editor of a medical journal through much of the decade.

Disillusioned with his career, Mahoney took acting classes at St. Nicholas Theatre that inspired him to quit his day job and pursue acting full time, and after a stage production in 1977, 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. Gary Sinise, co-founder of Steppenwolf, said in an interview for Bomb Magazine that Lyle Kessler's play Orphans "..kicked John Mahoney, Kevin Anderson and Terry Kinney off into the movie business" after their Steppenwolf performance in it where he won the Derwent Award and the Theatre World Award . In 1986, he won Broadway's Tony Award for Best Featured Actor in a Play for his performance in John Guare's The House of Blue Leaves.