Charles John Mahoney (June 20, 1940 – February 4, 2018) was an English-American actor. From 1993 to 2004, Mahoney played the retired police officer Martin Crane on the NBC sitcom Frasier, and won a Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Comedy Series for the role. He is also known for his roles on stage and screen.
Mahoney started his career in Chicago as a member of the Steppenwolf Theatre Company alongside John Malkovich, Gary Sinise, and Laurie Metcalf. He received the Clarence Derwent Award as Most Promising Male Newcomer in 1986. Later that year, his performance in the Broadway revival of John Guare's The House of Blue Leaves earned him a Tony Award for Best Featured Actor in a Play.
Mahoney gained attention for his role in John Patrick Shanley's romantic comedy Moonstruck (1987). His other film roles include in Tin Men (1987), Eight Men Out (1988), Say Anything... (1989), Barton Fink (1991), The Hudsucker Proxy (1994), In the Line of Fire (1993), and The American President (1995). He also voiced roles in Antz (1998), The Iron Giant (1999), Atlantis: The Lost Empire (2001), and Kronk's New Groove (2005). In television, Mahoney also made appearances on Cheers, 3rd Rock from the Sun, ER, In Treatment, Hot in Cleveland, and Foyle's War.
Early life and education
Charles John Mahoney was born in Blackpool, England on June 20, 1940, the seventh of eight children. His father, Reg, was a baker who played classical piano, and his mother, Margaret (née Watson), was a housewife who loved reading. His paternal grandfather was Irish. The family had been evacuated to Blackpool from their home city of Manchester when it was heavily bombed during the Second World War. Mahoney started school at St Joseph's College. After the war, the family moved back to Manchester, where Mahoney grew up in the suburb of Withington and discovered acting at the Stretford Children's Theatre. His parents' marriage was not happy. They would not speak to each other for long periods of time—and when they did, it often led to heated arguments. The family situation, combined with the war, fueled Mahoney's interest in acting and he vowed to leave Manchester.
Mahoney moved to the United States aged 18 in 1959 when his older sister Vera (a war bride living in rural Illinois, where he had visited in 1951) agreed to sponsor him. He studied at Quincy University before joining the United States Army. After graduating from Quincy, he lived in Macomb, Illinois, and earned his Master's degree in English from Western Illinois University, where he went on to teach English in the late 1960s before settling in Forest Park, Illinois, and later in Oak Park, Illinois. He became a U.S. citizen in 1971 and served as an associate editor of the Quality Review Bulletin medical journal through much of the late 1970s.
Mahoney made a concerted effort to lose his English accent after joining the U.S. Army, later stating that he felt that he did not want to "stand out" in his new adopted country. He spoke with an American accent for the rest of his life.
