Louis Giambalvo

Louis Giambalvo is a character actor who has appeared in numerous television shows as a guest star, as well as co-starring in several feature films. Born and raised in New York City, in the 1970s he was a co-founder of the experimental Colonnades Theater Lab, a critically acclaimed performance group that Danny DeVito, Peter Scolari, Rhea Perlman, and Michael Lessac also helped form. The avant-garde troupe, which performed plays by Mikhail Bulgakov and Frank O'Connor, was frequently written about by critics of the time as the city's premiere small theater. Following DeVito, Scolari, and Perlman to pursue television and film work, Giambalvo left for Los Angeles in 1979, landing bit parts on television shows like "The White Shadow" and "Barney Miller," and in the television movie "Alcatraz: The Whole Shocking Story." In the early 1980s, he played the friend of Madeline Kahn's husband on the short-lived ABC sitcom "Oh, Madeline" and had bit parts in several feature films, including the slapstick comedy "Airplane II: The Sequel," the horror anthology "Nightmares," and William Friedkin's black comedy "Deal of the Century." His best parts, though, were probably playing the C.I.A. agent in the teen comedy "Real Genius" and a suicidal man in the fifth and final Dirty Harry film, "The Dead Pool." He was also a guest star on several episodes of the groundbreaking police show "Hill Street Blues," arguably his most well-known television role.