In Remembrance: Michael Jeter

     Character actor Michael Jeter, best known for appearing in The Green Mile as well as television’s Evening Shade and Sesame Street, has passed away on Sunday, March 30, 2003. He was 50.

     Jeter was born in Lawrenceburg, Tennessee on August 26, 1952. He studied medicine at Memphis State University where he also became interested in theater. Following graduation, he moved to New York to pursue a career on the stage.

     His first film role was in Milos Forman’s 1979 adaptation of the musical Hair. He followed this with small roles in 1981’s Ragtime and Woody Allen’s Zelig (1983).

     After two bouts with drug and alcohol abuse, he quit acting and became a legal secretary. In 1987, a casting director, who wanted him for a roll on CBS’s Designing Women, sought him out.

     After a few small roles in films like Dead Bang (1989), Tango & Cash (1989) and Miller’s Crossing (1990), Jeter landed his first breakout role as a homeless cabaret singer in Terry Gilliam’s The Fisher King (1991). He followed up with roles as diverse as Rudy, a kindhearted mental patient in Patch Adams (1998), a death row inmate who befriends a mouse in The Green Mile (1999) and a dinosaur hunter in 2001’s Jurassic Park III.

     Jeter won a Tony award for his role as German Jewish bookkeeper Otto Kringelein in the Broadway revival of the musical Grand Hotel. He also earned an LA Critics Circle Award, A Drama Desk Award and the Clarence Derwent Prize for his performance. In 1992 he received an Emmy for his work on the Burt Reynolds sit-com Evening Shade. He would earn two more Emmy nominations for guest starring roles in the drama series Pickett Fences and Chicago Hope.

     Jeter had been filming the Christmas movie The Polar Express with Tom Hanks. Producers believe that there is enough footage to preserve his role in the film.