Jack Warden was a long-running character actor. He was born in the early twenties and has appeared in dozens of roles over a lengthy and prolific career, winning the Emmy Award and being nominated for the Oscar. He has recently died at the age of 85.
Jack Warden was born in Newark, New Jersey in the year 1920. His birthday is the eighteenth of September. During his teenage years he found work as a boxer after being expelled from school for getting into fights. From 1938 to 1944 he served in the Navy, the Merchant Marine and the Army, fighting in the Second World War as a paratrooper and at the Battle of the Bulge. During his time in the Army he decided that he would become an actor after the war, and used the G.I. Bill to help him move to New York City and start work as an actor. For several years Jack Warden was a stage actor, and started finding film and television roles in the early fifties. His breakthrough performance was in the classic movie "12 Angry Men", about an arguing jury in a murder case.
Jack Warden was generally a supporting character actor. He appeared in many successful movies including "From Here to Eternity", "Brian's Song", "Shampoo", "Heaven Can Wait", "All the President's Men", "...And Justice for All", "Being There", "The Verdict", "Problem Child" and "While You Were Sleeping". His acting career lasted for over sixty years, and he appeared in over a hundred movies. The last movie Jack Warden acted in before his death was "The Replacements" in 2000, a film loosely based on the NFL players' strike of 1987 where he played opposite Keanu Reeves and Gene Hackman.
Jack Warden died from heart and kidney failure on July 19, 2006. He was eighty five years old.