Larry Frank Cedar (born March 6, 1955) is an American voice, film and television actor, best known as one of the players of the Children's Television Workshop mathematics show Square One TV on PBS from 1987 to 1994. He played Max, Alex the Butcher's assistant, in a series of commercials for Kroger in 1989. He is also known for playing Leon, the opium-addicted thief and faro dealer, in the internationally acclaimed HBO series Deadwood.
Life and career
Cedar's professional acting career did not begin until shortly after his admission to Hastings Law School when, on an impulse, he decided to audition for, and was accepted into the MFA Theater program at UCLA, from which he graduated in 1978. While there, he won the Hugh O'Brian Acting Competition award for Best Actor, resulting in a one-year artist development contract with Universal Studios. He went on to star in various television films, and numerous episodics and feature films, including a starring role opposite Rebecca De Mornay in the Ivan Reitman-produced Feds, and an appearance as The Creature on the Wing, opposite John Lithgow, in the Steven Spielberg remake, Twilight Zone: The Movie, directed by George Miller. He has also won an L.A. Theater Alliance Ovation Award for Best Featured Actor in a Musical. Other actors in Cedar's family include Jon Cedar and George Cedar.
Cedar spent six seasons in New York starring in the award-winning PBS series Square One TV, and later starred in 40 episodes of the Fox television series A.J.'s Time Travelers. A veteran stage performer, he appeared in the one-man play Billy Bishop Goes to War at the Colony Theatre. He has been nominated for two Los Angeles Theater Alliance Ovation awards for his performances in Anything Goes (as Lord Oakley) opposite Rachel York, and in She Loves Me (as Sipos, for which he won Best Featured Actor in a Musical). His other stage work includes portraying Hoagy Carmichael in Hoagy, Bix, and Wolfgang Beethoven Bunkhaus at L.A.'s Mark Taper Forum; as Vernon opposite Lea Thompson in They're Playing Our Song; and as Secretary Thompson in 1776 opposite Roger Rees.
In August 2008, Cedar appeared in Towelhead, the directorial debut of Alan Ball (creator of Six Feet Under). He co-starred opposite Adrien Brody as the demented Chester Sinclair in the Ben Affleck/Diane Lane noir feature film Hollywoodland, directed by Allen Coulter, and recurred for three seasons as Leon, the opium-addicted card dealer and thief, in the David Milch helmed HBO series Deadwood opposite Powers Boothe and Ian McShane. His independent film work includes the award winning short Tel Aviv, the science fiction thriller Forecast, and the full-length horror film Midnight Son. He has also done voice-over work for hundreds of commercials, cartoon series, and video games.
In 2010, Cedar had a role in The Crazies, playing Principal Ben Sandborn. From 2011-2012 he portrayed Cornelius Hawthorne, father of Chevy Chase's character Pierce Hawthorne, on 2 episodes of Community.
Cedar is active in the Los Angeles theatre community. In 2013 he starred in King Lear with The Porters of Hellsgate. For the 2013 Hollywood Fringe Festival, he developed the script for Orwellian: Rants, Recollections, and Cautionary Tales From The Works of Eric Arthur Blair, which is a one-hour adaptation of three works by George Orwell: Down and Out in Paris and London, Animal Farm, and Nineteen Eighty-Four. The play was produced by The Porters of Hellsgate in conjunction with the Orwell estate.
