Career
The classically trained Waterston has numerous stage credits to his name. For example, he played an award-winning Benedick in Joseph Papp's production of Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing, and played the title role in Hamlet. He continues live theater work during the summers, often seen acting at places like Long Wharf Theatre and the Yale Repertory Theatre in New Haven.
Waterston made his film debut in 1965's The Plastic Dome of Norma Jean, and came to prominence in Fitzwilly in 1967. He starred as Tom with Katharine Hepburn in a 1973 TV movie adaptation of Tennessee Williams' The Glass Menagerie. The film also featured Michael Moriarty (as the Gentleman Caller), whom Waterston later replaced as the Executive Assistant District Attorney on Law & Order. One of his breakout roles was opposite Jeff Bridges in the western comedy Rancho Deluxe in 1975. Other films include Savages (1972), The Great Gatsby (1974), Journey Into Fear (1975), Capricorn One (1978), Heaven's Gate, Hopscotch (1980), and The Killing Fields (1984, nominated Academy Award for Best Actor). In 1985 he co-starred in Robert Preston's final TV film with Mary Tyler Moore, "Finnegan Begin Again." Also with Mary Tyler Moore, Waterston played the title role in Gore Vidal's "Lincoln" (1988). Other roles include "Assault at West Point" with Samuel L. Jackson, Mindwalk (1990), and Serial Mom (1994). Waterston has appeared in several Woody Allen films, including Interiors (1978), Hannah and Her Sisters (1986, cameo), September (1987) and Crimes and Misdemeanors (1989). Waterston is a six-time Emmy Award nominee, as well as a winner of the Golden Globe and Screen Actors Guild Awards.
Aside from Law & Order, other television roles include D.A. Forrest Bedford in I'll Fly Away, for which he won a Golden Globe Award for Best Actor – Drama Series in 1993. He also had a starring role in an episode segment on the TV series Amazing Stories called "Mirror Mirror". In 1994 he appeared as US President William Foster, alongside Forest Whittaker and Dana Delany, in the made for TV movie The Enemy Within, a remake of director John Frankenheimer's Cold War political thriller Seven Days In May.
In 1994, Waterston debuted as Executive Assistant District Attorney Jack McCoy in the fifth season of TV's "Law & Order." He played the role of McCoy, who would eventually become District Attorney, through the series finale in 2009, and has reprised the role throughout the Law and Order Universe. Upon the show's cancellation, Waterston was the second-longest serving cast member.
Waterston served on the Advisory Committee for the Lincoln Bicentennial, celebrating Abraham Lincoln's 200th birthday. Waterston has portrayed Lincoln on stage and screen (The Civil War, Gore Vidal's "Lincoln, and the Broadway play Abe Lincoln in Illinois." He also voiced Lincoln in an exhibit at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia, and delivered Lincoln's Cooper Union speech on May 5, 2004.
Waterston lent his voice to the animated television series Family Guy where he played Dr. Kaplan, the psychiatrist Brian Griffin consults during his mid-life crisis in the episode "Brian in Love". He voices Dr. Kaplan again in the episode "Road to Rhode Island", but he is not credited in any other episode in which the character appears. Waterston also narrated NBC's documentary, The Great Race, the story of the famous 4 x 10-kilometer cross-country relay at the 1994 Winter Olympics in Lillehammer, Norway, which Italy won over the host nation. The special aired during NBC's coverage of the 2006 Winter Olympics in Torino, Italy, on February 18, the day before the 2006 relay took place, which was also won by Italy. He added partial narration to the Ken Burns documentary, Lewis & Clark: The Journey of the Corps of Discovery, serving as the voice of Thomas Jefferson. He also played Jefferson in Burns' documentary about Jefferson. He also appeared in the first episode of ABC's Masters of Science Fiction, playing an amnesiac in the episode "A Clean Escape".
Waterston appeared on the 5,100th edition of Jeopardy!, on November 10, 2006, with Kathryn Erbe of Law & Order: Criminal Intent and Christopher Meloni of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit. Waterston finished second to Meloni, and received a $25,000 prize, which he donated to Refugees International and Oceana. He also made a popular cameo appearance on an episode of Saturday Night Live as himself, extolling the virtues of Old Glory Insurance, meant to protect the elderly from robot attacks.
Waterston is regularly featured in television advertisements for TD Ameritrade (formerly TD Waterhouse, which is mostly owned by Toronto-Dominion Bank and the Ricketts family). He replaced former Law & Order castmate Steven Hill as TD's spokesman. He has lent his voice to an ad for The Nation.
Waterston has appeared in a recurring segment on The Colbert Report, called "Sam Waterston Says Things You Should Never Believe In A Trustworthy Manner." The segments usually involve Waterston simply stating an obviously untrue film quote in a very convincing voice.
Waterston appeared as Polonius in the 2008 Shakespeare in the Park production of Hamlet. His performance received excellent reviews in The New York Times and many other newspapers around the country, particularly in the Northeast.
Waterston narrates for Time-Life history specials.
On February 12, 2009, Waterson joined the Aaron Copland School of Music at Queens College orchestra and chorus, along with the Riverside Inspirational Choir and NYC Labor Choir, in honoring Abraham Lincoln's 200th birthday at the Riverside Church in New York City. Under the direction of Maurice Peress, they performed Earl Robinson's "The Lonesome Train: A Music Legend for Actors, Folk Singers, Choirs, and Orchestra" in which Waterson depicted Abraham Lincoln.
On January 7, 2010, Waterston received the 2,397th Star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
On October 30, 2010, Waterson read Colbert's original poem "Are you sure" at the Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear in Washington D.C.
Waterston returned to television in 2012 as cable news president Charlie Skinner in The Newsroom, an HBO series by Aaron Sorkin.
Read more about this topic: Sam Waterston
Famous quotes containing the word career:
“In time your relatives will come to accept the idea that a career is as important to you as your family. Of course, in time the polar ice cap will melt.”
—Barbara Dale (b. 1940)
“The 19-year-old Diana ... decided to make her career that of wife. Today that can be a very, very iffy line of work.... And what sometimes happens to the women who pursue it is the best argument imaginable for teaching girls that they should always be able to take care of themselves.”
—Anna Quindlen (b. 1952)
“He was at a starting point which makes many a man’s career a fine subject for betting, if there were any gentlemen given to that amusement who could appreciate the complicated probabilities of an arduous purpose, with all the possible thwartings and furtherings of circumstance, all the niceties of inward balance, by which a man swings and makes his point or else is carried headlong.”
—George Eliot [Mary Ann (or Marian)