Sam Freed (born August 29, 1948) is an American actor and voice actor who has performed on Broadway and television and in movies. He appeared in Season 1's It's A Wonderful Mork, as Mindy's failed blind date...and alternate universe dead beat husband, Cliff.
Biography[]
Sam Freed was the youngest of six children of a traveling salesman father and a homemaker mother. He graduated from York Suburban Senior High School and began developing his acting skills at the York Little Theatre. He earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in Theatre from Penn State in 1970. His first production at the university was Under Milk Wood. While he apprenticed with Festival Theatre, he first met actress Barrie Youngfellow, whom he would eventually marry in 1983
Career[]
Freed was immediately hired after graduation by Jon Jory at the Actors Theatre of Louisville. After moving to New York City in January 1971, he performed in dinner and summer theatres and helped build theatrical scenery. Later that year, he joined The Proposition, an improvisational comedy revue which at the time also featured Jane Curtin prior to her rise to fame on SNL, and long before Kate & Allie which would become the show he would be best known for.
His first screen credit (albeit uncredited) came on SNL in 1975, before he moved to the West Coast and got his first properly credited part in Happy Days (1977), he followed this with appearances in Family (1977 - 78), Wonder Woman (1978), Kojak (1978), The Ted Knight Show (1978), Flying High (1978), Lou Grant (1978), Ryan's Hope (1981), Nurse (1981), One of the Boys (1982), It's a Living (1982-1987)
From 1984 - 1989, Freed played three different characters on Kate & Allie, two of them as a guest star. In "Candidate," Season 2's fifth episode which originally aired on November 5, 1984, he was Jonathan Conti, a political contender who entered into a brief extramarital relationship with Allie Lowell. In "Late Bloomer," the Season 3 finale first shown on May 12, 1986, he was Keith, the ex-husband of Julia Peterson (Lindsay Wagner). The episode, which also featured Barbara Barrie, Roger Bowen and Mercedes Ruehl, was originally intended to be a spin-off for a new sitcom with the same name, but it was never realized.
Freed's debut as Bob Barsky, a retired professional football player working as a local television sportscaster, was in "Dates of Future Past," the twelfth installment of Season 4 from December 15, 1986. Barsky's first encounter with Allie in a grocery store was the start of a romantic relationship that culminated in their marriage early in the program's sixth and final season. By that time, Freed had become a series regular.
He also appeared in Hardcastle and McCormick (1985), Kay O'Brien (1986), Beauty and the Beast (1988), Ann Jillian (1989), Murder, She Wrote (1991) From 1990 - 1991, In the short-lived series Ferris Bueller, he played Bill Bueller, the father of the title character. The Cosby Mysteries (1994), Sex and the City (1999). He played a different character on each of the Law & Order shows (Law & Order (1992 - 96), Law & Order: Special Victims Unit (1999), and Law & Order: Criminal Intent (2001). Third Watch (2000), Conviction (2006) Great Performances (2006), All My Children (2007). He also portrayed James C. Whiting III, the executive editor of The Baltimore Sun, in the fifth and final season of The Wire (2008). As the World Turns (2010), Person of Interest (2012), Elementary (2013), The Good Wife (2013), The Blacklist (2014),House of Cards (2015), Our Cartoon President (2018 - 2020)
He also appeared in the TV Movies Lady of the House (1978) My Husband Is Missing (1978), Kangaroos in the Kitchen (1982), Courage (1986) Monday Night Mayhem (2002). And the Features Call Me (1988), Jack the Bear (1993), reuniting with Jane Curtin again in Coneheads (1993), Thinner (1996), My Divorce (1997), 101 Ways (The Things a Girl Will Do to Keep Her Volvo) (2000), Peoples (2004), Brooklyn Lobster (2005), American Gangster (2007), Lullaby (2014), Landline (2017).
Mork & Mindy[]
Sam Freed appeared in a particularly well remembered one off part, of Cliff. Well remembered as he is the 'other' man that Mindy marries, in a world where Mork never arrived into her life or that of the McConnell Family. The disastrous outcome of her marrying the gambling addict and dead beat that Cliff turns out to be, changing Mork's mind that he was bad for her and the others, and that if anyone was going to mess up her life, he'd rather it would be him.