American actor Ed Asner dies aged 91

Nominated for 17 Emmy awards, and the winner of seven, American actor, Ed Asner has died at the age of 91. According to reports, his family confirmed he passed on peacefully on Sunday morning.

He achieved great feats in TV as the cranky news director at a Minneapolis TV station in the 1970s comedy, who could recognize spunk in his new employee, Mary Richards, and famously hated it. He later became the editor of a metropolitan newspaper, shifting into a dramatic setting that addressed major issues not long after “All the President’s Men” had romanticized newspaper work at the movies.

A tough but kind-hearted man underneath the gruff exterior, Grant was the role of a lifetime for an actor who hardly seemed destined for leading-man status, as Asner freely said in interviews, BBC reports.

Before “Mary Tyler Moore” he primarily appeared on TV shows in an assortment of dramatic and tough-guy roles. He even played the villain opposite John Wayne and Robert Mitchum in the western “El Dorado.”

In 2009, he became known to a new generation of audiences by playing elderly widower Carl Fredricksen in the animated hit Up.

Asides his acting career, Asner was an avid and outspoken supporter of a lot of humanitarian and political causes, including trade unionism and animal rights.

S.S/BBC