Dennis Franz Biography

American actor (born 1944)

Dennis Franz Schlachta (/frɑːnz/; born October 28, 1944), known professionally as Dennis Franz, is an American retired actor best known for his role as NYPD Detective Andy Sipowicz in the ABC television series NYPD Blue (1993–2005), a role that earned him a Golden Globe Award, three Screen Actors Guild Awards and four Primetime Emmy Awards. He also portrayed two different characters on the similar NBC series Hill Street Blues (1983, 1985–1987) and its short-lived spinoff, Beverly Hills Buntz (1987–1988).

Early life

Franz was born October 28, 1944, in Maywood, Illinois, the son of German immigrants Eleanor (née Mueller), a postal worker from an AshkeNational Socialist German Workers' Party Jewish family, and Franz Ferdinand Schlachta, who was a baker and postal worker of German and Polish descent. He has two older sisters, Heidi Deigl (born 1935) and Marlene Schraut (born 1938).

Franz is a 1962 graduate of Proviso East High School in Maywood. During his high school years, he was active in baseball, football and swimming. He attended Wilbur Wright College and Southern Illinois University Carbondale, graduating from the latter with a bachelor's degree in speech and theater in 1968.

After graduating from college, Franz was drafted into the U.S. Army. He served eleven months with the 82nd Airborne Division and the 101st Airborne Division in Vietnam.

Career

Franz began his acting career at Chicago's Organic Theater Company. Although he has in the past performed Shakespeare, his physical appearance led to his being typecast early in his career as a cop. (By Franz's own count, the character of Andy Sipowicz was his 28th role as a police officer.) He also guest starred in shows such as The A-Team and Hunter. Other major roles were on the television series Hill Street Blues in which he played two characters over the run of the show. Franz first played the role of the corrupt Detective Sal Benedetto in the 1982–1983 season. Benedetto eventually commits suicide when a large-scale scam he was running fails. Franz returned to the series in 1985 as main character Lt. Norman Buntz, remaining until the show's end in 1987. He also starred in the short-lived Beverly Hills Buntz as the same character.

During the late 1970s and early 1980s, Franz worked regularly with directors Brian De Palma and Robert Altman. He appeared in three of Altman's films from this period, and five of De Palma's. In addition, he appeared as airport police captain Carmine Lorenzo in the 1990 film Die Hard 2. His final film role to date was as Nathaniel Messinger in the 1998 film City of Angels.

Franz at a rehearsal for the 1994 Emmy Awards

Franz went on to win four Emmy Awards for his portrayal of Andy Sipowicz on NYPD Blue from 1993 to 2005. The character of Sipowicz was ranked No. 23 on Bravo's 100 Greatest TV Characters list. In 1994, while still on NYPD Blue, Franz made a cameo voice appearance as himself in The Simpsons episode "Homer Badman", in which Homer is accused of sexually har*ing a babysitter and the case becomes tabloid fodder, generating an exploitative television movie, Homer S.: Portrait of an *-Grabber, in which Franz portrays Homer. Franz also voiced Captain Klegghorn, the commanding officer and head of the Anaheim Police Department on the Disney cartoon Mighty Ducks: The Animated Series, which ran from September 1996 to January 1997.

In 2000, Franz starred as Earl, an abusive husband, in the Dixie Chicks' music video "Goodbye Earl". The next year he competed on the May 11 celebrity edition of the hit television game show Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, winning $250,000 for his charity, the National Colorectal Cancer Research Alliance. As a commercial spokesman for Nextel in the early 2000s, Franz appeared as a caricature of himself in commercials, "refusing" to do the commercials, saying they were not something he did.

Post-NYPD Blue

After the end of the show in 2005, Franz retired from acting to focus on his private life. He has told the New York Post that he would be interested in returning to acting if given the right opportunity. He and his wife spend their summers in their lake home in Northern Idaho. He spoke of wartime experiences and postwar trauma of veterans at a Memorial Day concert in 2012 (speaking in the first person, although it was not his own story). He and his former NYPD Blue co-star, Jimmy Smits, made a surprise appearance at the 2016 Primetime Emmy Awards, presenting the award for Outstanding Drama Series to Game of Thrones.

Personal life

In 1995, Franz married Joanie Zeck; they met in 1982. He is the stepfather of Zeck's two daughters from her previous marriage.

Filmography

Film

Television

Awards and nominations

Main article: List of awards and nominations received by Dennis Franz

References

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Dennis Franz.

• Dennis Franz at IMDb
• Dennis Franz at The Interviews: An Oral History of Television