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Josef Sommer
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Biography from Leonard Maltin's Movie Encyclopedia:
Solid, dependable character actor who attended Carnegie-Mellon University and had extensive stage experience (including a wide range of classical and Shakespearean roles) before making his screen debut as district attorney Rothko in Dirty Harry (1971). A brilliant stage actor, he's rarely had parts of great substance or shading on film, but he has been featured in a number of prominent movies, in often notable parts. He was the congressional committee chairman in The Front (1976), then appeared in Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977), Absence of Malice (as investigative reporter Sally Field's editor), Rollover and Reds (all 1981), and Hanky Panky (1982). He also narrated Sophie's Choice (1982). As the years passed, the quality and scope of his roles grew, and his name inched upward in the credits. He was a therapy patient/murder victim (as well as Meryl Streep's lover) in Still of the Night (also 1982), Kathleen Quinlan's father in Independence Day a labor union executive in Silkwood (both 1983), a scientist in Iceman (1984), one of Gene Hackman's exCIA cronies in Target (1985), third-billed as narcotics cop Harrison Ford's immediate superior in Witness (also 1985), a corrupt judge in Chances Are top-billed in a potboiler, Dracula's Widow (both 1989), and part of the all-star ensemble in Woody Allen's Shadows and Fog (1992). He has also appeared in a number of madefor-TV movies, including Brotherly Love (1985), Yuri Nosenko, KGB (1986), Bridge to Silence (1989), and Hostages (1993). |  |
