- Born
- Died
- Birth nameCharles John Mahoney
- Height1.73 m
- John Mahoney was an award-winning American actor. He was born in Blackpool, Lancashire, England, the seventh of eight children of Margaret and Reg, a baker. His family was evacuated to the sea-side resort to avoid the Nazi bombing of their native Manchester. The Mancunian Mahoneys eventually returned to Manchester during the war. Visiting the States to see his older sister, a "war bride" who had married an American, the young Mahoney decided to emigrate and was sponsored by his sister. John eventually won his citizenship by serving in the U.S. Army.
Long interested in acting, Mahoney didn't make the transition to his craft until he was almost forty years old. Mahoney took acting classes at the St. Nicholas Theater and finally built up the courage to quit his day job and pursue acting full time. John Malkovich, one of the founders of the Second City's distinguished Steppenwolf Theatre, encouraged Mahoney to join Steppenwolf, and in 1986, Mahoney won a Tony Award for Best Featured Actor in a Play for his performance in John Guare's The House of Blue Leaves (1987).
Mahoney made his feature film debut in 1980, but he was best known for playing the role of the father of the eponymous character Frasier (1993) from 1993 until 2004. He later concentrated on stage work back in Chicago, and appeared on Broadway in 2007 in a revival of Le baiser empoisonné (1992).
John died on February 4, 2018, in Chicago, Illinois.- IMDb mini biography by: Jon C. Hopwood
- ChildrenNo Children
- ParentsReg MahoneyMargaret Mahoney (Watson)
- RelativesRita Sullivan(Sibling)
- Gravelly voice
- Often played men older than his real-life age.
- Lost his English accent after he joined the U.S. Army.
- After Frasier (1993) ended, Mahoney claims he was approached for other TV series offers, but declined. Citing that Frasier (1993) comfortably gave him enough money, he wanted to return to the theater, which he considers his home.
- Did not start acting until he was 37 years old.
- He was formerly an English professor who taught at many colleges.
- Although he later played Frasier's father Martin Crane on Frasier (1993), John Mahoney appeared on a 1992 episode of Cheers (1982) as a pianist who was hired to write a jingle for the bar.
- (on his decision to pursue an acting career) So I was the associate editor of a medical journal in Chicago, and I was thirty seven, and all of a sudden I just sort of started going through this dark night of the soul... where I just... . Is this going to be it for me, am I going to be spending the rest of my life writing about cataracts and hemorrhoids... and... . just not what I wanted to do, and I was just intensely depressed all the time.
- People say there's no trace of an accent anymore, and there isn't because I worked very hard to lose it. And the reason I did that is a British accent in America is a real status symbol.
- I just wasn't happy. I didn't go home at night and bang my head against the wall, but I was smoking a lot and drinking a lot and it all sort of caught up with me in this dark night of the soul. I finally thought, before I get too old, I've got to try it, and if it doesn't work out, at least I'm not going to be 65 years old, looking back over my life and saying, 'God, why didn't I at least try?'.
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