Bruce Weitz

After acquiring undergraduate and graduate degrees from Pittsburgh's prestigious Carnegie Institute of Technology, Emmy-winning character actor Bruce Weitz went on to train at such august regional theaters as the Guthrie in Minneapolis, Minnesota and the Actors Theatre of Louisville (Kentucky).

He made his Broadway debut in a revival of "Death of a Salesman" (1976), starring George C. Scott, and subsequently acted in Broadway productions of "The Basic Training of Pavlo Hummel" (alongside Al Pacino) and "Norman, Is That You?." The compact, wiry Weitz also performed in 13 New York Shakespeare Festival productions from 1976-1980 but began making the transition from stage to TV at the end of the 70s, guest-starring on various series including "Quincy," "Kojak," "The White Shadow," "One Day at a Time" and "Lou Grant" while segueing to feature films in "The Private Files of J. Edgar Hoover" (1977).

Weitz's big break came when he landed the role of the vaguely maniacal Mick Belker on Steven Bochco's landmark police-drama "Hill Street Blues" (NBC, 1981-87). His scruffy little undercover cop endeared himself to viewers by sometimes biting offenders, barking at dogs or terrorizing surly criminals ("Would you like to sit down, hairball, or would you prefer internal bleeding?"), earning him a 1984 Emmy as Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Drama Series as well as five other nominations.

Since that series' demise, Weitz has stayed busy primarily on the small screen, acting frequently in movies and episodic TV, although he has occasionally performed on stage as in the Off-Broadway production of "Frankie and Johnny in the Claire de Lune" (1988). He returned as a series regular playing a newspaper columnist for one season (1991-92) on the ABC sitcom "Anything But Love" and reunited with Bochco as a psychiatrist counseling a family transplanted in Hawaii in the short-lived "The Byrds of Paradise" (ABC, 1994). He also appeared in the feature films "Deep Impact" (1998) and "Half Past Dead" (2002).