Name	Joel Grey
Height	5' 5"
Naionality	American
Date of Birth	11 April 1932
Place of Birth	Cleveland, Ohio, USA
Famous for

Son of a Yiddish revue performer, Joel Grey spent part of his childhood performing with his entertainer father. He made his stage debut at age nine in a production of “On Borrowed Time”at the Cleveland Playhouse, but did not score a break until seven years later in 1948, when he was spotted by Eddie Cantor while singing and dancing in his father's revue, “Borscht Capades.” Within a year, Grey was recruited as a young performer at NBC's “Colgate Comedy Hour,” and continued to make his feature film bow with About Face (1952), the unmemorable musical comedy remake of the 1938 Brother Rat. It was his starring turn as Jack in an episode of the NBC “Producers Showcase: Jack and the Beanstalk” (1956) and a performance in his first Broadway, “The Littlest Revue”(also 1956), that eventually won the then relatively unknown performer particular attention.

Grey kept to switch over between TV and stage, with a sporadic film appearance. In 1958, he collected some notice for his portrayal of Theodore in the CBS musical Little Women, adapted from a novel by Louisa May Alcott. Among his costars in the film were Florence Henderson and Zina Bethune. He was in the substitution cast for Neil Simon's “Come Blow Your Horn” in the late 1961 and two years later joined the USA tour for “Stop the World - I Want to Get Off.” It was also in 1961 that Grey made his last film appearance for over a decade, as Beagle, in Rock Hudson's Come September.

Eventually, in 1966, Grey experience a big breakthrough when Harold Prince cast him in his star-making role of the Master of Ceremonies (Emcee) in the landmark musical “Cabaret” on Broadway. Delivering a brilliant performance, which including singing such sensational Kander and Ebb songs as “Wilkommen” and “If You Could See Her,” he was handed a 1967 Tony for Best Supporting or Featured Actor (Musical). Lured by the victory, Grey was selected to play the title role of George M. Cohan in the biographical musical “George M!” in 1968 and was nominated for a Best Actor (Musical) Tony for his work in the play, which based slightly on Michael Curtiz's seminal “Yankee Doodle Dandy” (1942).

In 1970, Grey reprised the tour-de-force role of Cohen in NBC production of George M!, but it was not until two years later that the actor gained the best reviews of his career. He revisited the big screen to recreate his Tony winning role of The Emcee for director Bob Fosse's feature adaptation of “Cabaret” (1972) and for his spectacular effort in the film, Grey took home an Oscar, a Golden Globe, a Kansas City Film Critics Circle, a National Society of Film Critics and a National Board of Review for Best Supporting Actor, and a BAFTA for Best Newcomer. Also in 1972, the talented actor made his first TV film in ABC's Man on a String, playing Big Joe Brown opposite Christopher George and William Schallert.

Back to Broadway, Grey enjoyed his next success by playing Charley in the short-lived musical “Goodtime Charley” (1975), adapted from the story of the Dauphin and Joan of Arc. Starring along side Ann Reinking, he picked up his next Tony nomination in the category of Best Leading Actor in Musical. The following year saw Grey have the supporting role of the villainous Lowenstein in the Herbert Ross film The Seven Per-Cent Solution and play the promoter Nate Salsbury in Robert Altman's Buffalo Bill and the Indians, or Sitting Bull's History Lesson, which marked as Grey's last motion picture appearances for close to a decade.

Already popular as a musical comedy performer, the stage trained performer ventured to dramas when he returned to the stage in 1977 in the all-star ensemble cast of John Guare's “Marco Polo Sings a Solo” and then in 1985 in Larry Kramer's “The Normal Heart,” replacing Brad Davis as Ned Weeks. Both were shown at the New York Shakespeare Festival's Public Theater. But, the musical still proved to be his best media when in the late 1970s Grey netted his forth Tony nomination for his work in the 1979 short-lived “The Grand Tour.”

At the same year he performed “The Normal Heart,” Grey greeted his fans on the big screen by playing the aged Korean martial arts master, Chiun, in the Guy Hamilton-directed Remo Williams: The Adventure Begins (1985), opposite Fred Ward. The role brought him a Golden Globe nomination for Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role in a Motion Picture and a Saturn nomination for Best Supporting Actor. Two years later, he appeared as Aaron Diamond in the based-on-novel miniseries “Queenie” (CBS). During 1987-1988, he reprised the Emcee in the 20th anniversary revival of “Cabaret.”

In 1991, Grey took on the role of agent Johnny Hyde in the excellent ABC drama Marilyn and Me and was cast by Stephen Soderbergh as the reptilian and mean-spirited office manager in the director's drama film Kafka, opposite Jeremy Irons and Theresa Russell. He received an Emmy nomination for Outstanding Guest Actor in a Comedy Series for playing a Holocaust survivor named Jacob in the CBS series “Brooklyn Bridge” episode “The Last Immigrant”(1992), portrayed an eccentric millionaire in Philip Haas' independent film Music of Chance (1993), narrated and played the title role in the TNT The Wizard of Oz in Concert: Dreams Come True (1995) and was queerly cast as Josef Goebbels in the empirical The Empty Mirror (1996). Still in 1996, he was spotted on the stage playing the miserable husband of an accused murderess in the Broadway revival of “Chicago,” a performance that won him new admirers and revived praise as well as a Drama Desk for Outstanding Featured Actor in a Musical. Two years later, he recreated the role of Amos Hart in “Chicago” for his London stage debut performance, and closed up the decade with a role as the Ghost of Christmas Past in the TV adaptation of “A Christmas Carol” (NBC, 1999), which starred Patrick Stewart.

Grey toured in one-man stage show in 2000, the same year he offered a notable cameo appearance as Oldrich Novy in the musical film Dancer in the Dark, directed and penned by Lars von Trier. A series of TV work followed, including as Guido in the miniseries “Further Tales of the City” (2001) and Doc in three episodes of “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” (2001), before he portrayed Dr. Mensley on the 2001 movie Reaching Normal, directed by Anne Heche. Next up, he was featured as Lemuel Idzik in several episodes of “Oz” (2003), a series chronicling the daily activities of an extraordinary prison facility and its criminal inhabitants. He has since made guest appearances in such shows as “Law & Order: Criminal Intent” (2003), “Crossing Jordan” (2005), “Alias”(2005), “House M.D.” (2006) and more recently, “Brothers & Sisters” (2007). On the stage front, from October 2003 to July 2004, he starred as The Wonderful Wizard of Oz in the smash hit Broadway musical “Wicked.”

The 75-year-old actor is set to costar with Anjelica Huston, Sam Rockwell, Kelly Macdonald and Clark Gregg in the upcoming movie Choke (2008), directed and scripted by Clark Gregg from a novel novel by Chuck Palahniuk.