Veteran actor Jerry Adler passes away at 96

LOS ANGELES: Jerry Adler, best known for his role as Hesh Rabkin on ‘The Sopranos’, has passed away. He was 96. As per Variety, Adler breathed his last on August 23. His demise was confirmed by the Riverside Memorial Chapel in New York.

Adler entered the acting world in his 60s. After years of working behind the curtain in Broadway and television production, he was on the verge of retiring when a casting director for the 1992 thriller The Public Eye—a friend of Adler’s daughter—urged him to audition for director Howard Franklin. That performance marked the beginning of his long run as a highly in-demand character actor, as per Variety.

Adler featured across all six seasons as Hesh Rabkin, a Jewish loan shark who was a friend of Tony Soprano’s father and remains an advisor to James Gandolfini’s lead throughout the series. Adler also featured on FX’s firefighter drama ‘Rescue Me’ as the fire chief Sidney Feinberg, and played the lawyer Howard Lyman on CBS’s ‘The Good Wife’.

He was also seen in ‘Manhattan Murder Mystery’, the JC Chandor period thriller ‘A Most Violent Year’ and ‘Driveways’.

Adler published a memoir, “Too Funny for Words: Backstage Tales From Broadway, Television and the Movies,” in 2024.
He is survived by his wife, Joan Laxman. (ANI)