John Spencer's Obituary

From The Daily Telegraph today - http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?view=DETAILS&grid=&xml=/news/2005/12/19/db1902.xml

John Spencer
(Filed: 19/12/2005)

John Spencer, who has died aged 58, starred alongside Martin Sheen in the popular political television drama The West Wing, which has been broadcast to much acclaim on both sides of the Atlantic.

Playing Leo McGarry, the dedicated and loyal White House Chief of Staff, opposite Sheen's President Josiah Bartlet, Spencer was a crucial member of the cast from the start of the series in 1999; he received Emmy nominations for his role every year from 1999 to 2004, winning as a best supporting actor in 2002.

For Aaron Sorkin, the creator of The West Wing, Spencer, a veteran of quality television drama, had been the top choice to play the world-weary but shrewd McGarry, who had battled alcoholism and drug addiction.

"We need someone like John Spencer," Sorkin had announced during the casting, and he was delighted when he accepted the part. "It's a chance," Spencer later explained, "to look behind closed doors and see people at work in this rarified environment, to see them not just as political figures but as human beings."

He was made for the role. "It was life imitating art imitating life," admitted Spencer, after revealing his own battles with addiction while still a struggling young actor.

It was a bitter irony that the similarity did not end there; recently Spencer's character in the show had suffered a heart attack and been forced to give up the White House, only to recover and run for vice-president. Spencer's death on Friday, the result of a heart attack, has temporarily thrown the production into disarray, as much of the filming in the present series had been focused on his new election campaign.

The only child of a lorry driver, he was born John Speshock in New York on December 20 1946, and grew up at Paterson, New Jersey.

At the age of 16 he enrolled at the Professional Children's School in Manhattan, where he took classes with Liza Minnelli.

From there he landed a role in The Patty Duke Show, after which he enrolled at Farleigh Dickenson University, then returned to New York where he concentrated on theatre work.

Between 1974 and 1981 Spencer appeared in numerous theatrical productions, including David Mamet's Lakeboat, Tennessee Williams's Glass Menagerie and Emily Mann's Still Life, which examined the effects of the Vietnam war on Middle America and earned Spencer an Obie award during its off-Broadway run in 1981.

Film roles became more frequent as Spencer matured, and he was often cast as authority figures. In Sea of Love and Black Rain (both 1989) he played the boss of Al Pacino and Michael Douglas respectively.

His breakthrough came when he was cast as Harrison Ford's detective sidekick in Presumed Innocent (1990), after which the producer David E Kelly asked him to join the popular television series LA Law.

Spencer's portrayal of the tough, witty lawyer, Tommy Mullaney, revived the series and led to further big screen roles in Green Card (1992), The Rock (1997) and Cop Land (1997).

Latterly, Spencer's work kept him in Los Angeles, but he always regarded himself as a New Yorker. Until last year he continued to rent the same apartment he had lived in when he had been a struggling actor in the city.

After giving up smoking in 1999 he spent much of his spare time gardening at his house in Bel-Air, where he cultivated roses, hollyhocks, lilacs and other species more commonly found in the north-east of America.

Spencer, who was married and divorced in the 1970s, spent the last few years living with his long-term companion, the actress Patricia Mariano.

I'm devastated.

I know this came as a big shock to me too. Leo was my favorite character on the West Wing, I was so excited about the prospect of him staying on the show if Santos won the election.

:cry: