Tony Shalhoub

Career 1980–2001: Rise to prominence and Wings Shortly after graduating from Yale, Shalhoub moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts, where he spent four seasons with the American Repertory Theater before heading to New York City, where he found work waiting tables. He made his Broadway debut in the 1985 Rita Moreno/Sally Struthers production of The Odd Couple and was nominated for a 1992 Tony Award for his featured role in Conversations with My Father. Shalhoub met his wife, actress Brooke Adams, when they co-starred on Broadway in The Heidi Chronicles. In 1998, Shalhoub starred in The Classic Stage Company's production of Waiting for Godot alongside John Turturro and Christopher Lloyd.

After playing several small television and film roles Shalhoub landed the role of cab driver Antonio Scarpacci in the NBC sitcom Wings which he played from 1991 to 1997. Shalhoub was pleasantly surprised to land the role after having a guest appearance as a waiter in the second season. He became a regular in the third season. The character's name was kept, but the character's occupation changed to a cab driver. He demonstrated his dramatic range in the 1998 big-budget thriller The Siege, where he co-starred alongside Denzel Washington, Annette Bening, and Bruce Willis. His character, FBI Special Agent Frank Haddad, also a Lebanese American, suffered discrimination after terrorist attacks in New York City. He returned to series television in 1999, this time in a lead role on Stark Raving Mad, opposite Neil Patrick Harris. The show failed to attract an audience and NBC canceled the series in 2000.

2002–2009: Monk and acclaim

After a three-year absence from the small screen, Shalhoub starred in another TV series, Monk. Airing on the USA Network, the series featured Shalhoub as Adrian Monk, a detective with obsessive-compulsive disorder. He was nominated for an Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Comedy Series in eight consecutive years from 2003 to 2010, winning in 2003, 2005, and 2006. He also took the Golden Globe award for Best Performance by an Actor in a Television Series – Musical or Comedy in 2003. In May 2020, NBC's Peacock streaming service posted a series of videos on YouTube during the COVID-19 pandemic, entitled the "At-Home Variety Show". Among them was a Monk short entitled "Mr. Monk Shelters in Place", featuring Shalhoub and his co-stars Traylor Howard, Ted Levine, and Jason Gray-Stanford, showing how their characters were coping with the pandemic.

Shalhoub returned in December 2006 to the Off-Broadway Second Stage Theatre, opposite Patricia Heaton for a run of The Scene by Theresa Rebeck. In addition to his acting work, Shalhoub, along with the Network of Arab-American Professionals and Zoom-in-Focus Productions, established The Arab-American Filmmaker Award Competition in 2005. Arab-American filmmakers submitted screenplays, and the chosen winner was flown to Hollywood to have their screenplay produced.

Shalhoub played Alexander "Alex" Minion in the first three Spy Kids films (2001–2003). He appeared with Matthew Broderick and Alec Baldwin in the 2004 Hollywood satire The Last Shot as a gruff small-time mobster with a love for movies. In 2006, he appeared in Danny Leiner's drama The Great New Wonderful as a psychologist in post-9/11 New York City. In 2007, he appeared in the horror film 1408 and on-stage off-Broadway as Charlie in The Scene. He received a 2008 Grammy nomination in the category "Best Spoken Word Album for Children" for his narration of The Cricket in Times Square. He provided the voice of Luigi, a 1959 Fiat 500 who runs a tire shop, in the 2006 Disney/Pixar film Cars and its 2011 and 2017 sequels, Cars 2 and Cars 3, respectively, as well as 3 episodes of the short-form Cars series Tales from Radiator Springs (2013–2014) and the first episode of Cars on the Road (2022), and several video games in the franchise (2006–2011).

2010–2016: Return to theatre In 2010, he went to Broadway to act as Saunders in a revival version of Lend Me a Tenor in New York at the Music Box Theatre. He was nominated for a 2013 Tony Award for Best Performance by a Featured Actor in a Play for Lincoln Center Theater's production of Golden Boy at the Belasco Theatre. He was nominated for a 2014 Tony Award for Best Performance by a Leading Actor in a Play for Lincoln Center Theater's production of Act One at the Vivian Beaumont Theatre. Shalhoub and his wife appeared in Samuel Beckett's Happy Days in June and July 2015 in New York City. Shalhoub played Victor Kershaw in the 2013 true crime film Pain & Gain. He voiced Splinter in the 2014 film Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and reprised the role in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows (2016).

He starred in the musical stage adaptation of the film The Band's Visit, in the Off-Broadway Atlantic Theatre Company production. The musical, with music and lyrics by David Yazbek and book by Itamar Moses, ran from November 11, 2016, through December 23, 2016. He reprised his role when the show moved to Broadway where it opened at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre on November 9, 2017. For his performance, he won the 2018 Tony Award for Best Actor in a Musical. He also appeared as Walter Franz in the 2017 Broadway revival of The Price.

2017–2023: The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel Shalhoub stars as Jewish-American math professor Abe Weissman, father of protagonist Midge Maisel (Rachel Brosnahan), in the Emmy-winning, Amazon-produced television comedy series The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel. For his performance he won the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series and the Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Comedy Series both in 2019. Thelma Adams of TheWrap praised Abe's character development and Shalhoub's performance on the series, writing, "Midge's father — always intelligent, rarely self-aware — has a remarkable epiphany where he finally understands what Midge has accomplished, and how late he is to the party." Cristina Escobar of Roger Ebert.com declared, "[Shalhoub] came close to stealing the show".

He played the character of Fred in the 2021 animated film, Rumble, and reprised his role as Adrian Monk in Mr. Monk's Last Case: A Monk Movie in 2023.

Personal life Shalhoub married actress Brooke Adams in 1992. They have worked together in several films, in one episode of Wings, and on BrainDead. Adams has appeared credited as a "Special Guest Star" in five episodes of Monk—"Mr. Monk and the Airplane", "Mr. Monk's 100th Case", "Mr. Monk and the Kid", "Mr. Monk Visits a Farm", and "Mr. Monk and the Badge," as well as in Mr. Monk's Last Case.

Shalhoub and Adams appeared on Broadway together in the 2010 revival of Lend Me a Tenor. At the time of their wedding, Adams had an adopted daughter, whom Shalhoub adopted. In 1994, they adopted another daughter.

Investing Shalhoub is an investor in the Michelin-starred Italian restaurant Rezdôra.

Acting credits

Film

Television

Stage

Video games Year Title Voice role 1997 Fallout: A Post-Nuclear Role-Playing Game Aradesh 2006 Cars Luigi 2007 Cars Mater-National Championship 2009 Cars Race-O-Rama 2011 Cars 2

Producer Year Title Notes 2003–09 Monk 125 episodes 2005 MushShort film2009 Pet Peeves Feed the Fish

Awards and nominations