Actors - John Spencer

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	Actors - John Spencer

John Spencer, born John Speshock (December 20 1946 – December 16 2005), was an American actor who was best known for his role as Leo McGarry, the White House Chief of Staff on the television drama The West Wing.

Early life

Spencer was born in Paterson, New Jersey (although some sources say New York City) and grew up in nearby Totowa, the son of blue-collar parents, a Ukrainian-American father and an Irish-American mother. With his enrollment at the Professional Children's School in Manhattan at age 16, he found himself sharing classes with fellow students including Liza Minnelli and violinist Pinchas Zukerman. Later he attended Fairleigh Dickinson University but did not complete a degree.

Career

Spencer began his television career on The Patty Duke Show. He played Harrison Ford's detective sidekick in the 1990 courtroom thriller Presumed Innocent
. In the early 1990s, he was a regular cast member on L.A. Law, playing the rumpled, pugnacious associate attorney Tommy Mullaney. Later, he acted in the romantic comedy Forget Paris (1995) as a wisecracking co-worker to Billy Crystal's basketball referee; The Rock (1996) as the weasally FBI official Womack, and the 2002 theatre production of The Exonerated. Paralleling his character on The West Wing, he was a recovering alcoholic and divorcee. Spencer was actually the first actor cast in the West Wing.

Spencer won an Obie Award for the 1981 off-Broadway production of "Still Life," about a Vietnam veteran, and received a Drama Desk nomination for "The Day Room." After two previous nominations, Spencer won his first Emmy Award in 2002 for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Drama Series for his portrayal of Leo McGarry on The West Wing. The episodes Spencer submitted for judging by the Emmy voters were "Bartlet for America", in which Leo has to testify in front of a Congressional committee about the President's health and flashes back to his own medical lapse, and "We Killed Yamamoto".

Death

Spencer died following a heart attack in a Los Angeles hospital on December 16, 2005, four days before what would have been his fifty-ninth birthday. West Wing cast mate Stockard Channing was visiting with Spencer at the time of his death. He was buried in Laurel Grove Memorial Park in Totowa, New Jersey. NBC and Warner Bros. Television have not addressed how Spencer's death will affect the storyline of The West Wing . His character is in three of the five episodes of the show which were filmed but had not yet aired on television at the time of his death.

Filmography

WarGames
(1983)
The Protector
(1985)
Hiding Out
(1987)
Presumed Innocent
(1990)
L.A. Law (1990-1994)
Wing Commander IV (1994)
Forget Paris (1995)
The Rock (1996)
Cop Land
(1997)
The Negotiator
(1998)
The West Wing (TV series) (1999-2006)

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Actors - John Spencer

Early life

Career

Death

Filmography

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