"Acting is not about knowing all this stuff; it's about character.""Anyone who devotes time and attention to what makes people tick, to me, is a smart person.""Artists speak the truth to the public without fear of retribution or damage to their careers.""But some actors I have met possess an intelligence that I can only dream of. It's about character, it's about behavior. They understand things about people that I simply don't see.""For about the first ten years of my career, I wasn't terribly motivated.""I can't talk about foreign policy like anyone who's spent their life reading and learning foreign policy. But as a citizen in a democracy, it's very important that I participate in that.""I do believe all actors are smart.""I don't even like to use the word relationship. I don't know what it means.""I had no desire from an early age to be on the stage.""I just don't get invited to the same dinner parties I used to like to go to.""I kind of dwindled into acting.""I kind of have a dilettantish spirit about me.""I saw and I met a lot of people who were in the field. It also provided a context in which I came to respect what the actor did, because I saw how difficult it actually was to do.""I started getting jobs, and I thought it was going to be real easy.""I still think I'm going to do something else when I grow up.""I think it's good to meet smart people and talk.""I think you have an obligation to be an optimist. Because if you're not, nothing will change.""I was immature the way I handled the business. I saw myself as a tribune of the people.""I'm a 9/11 Republican.""I've seen people with a tremendous amount of educational background in the field not turn out to be terribly good actors, and I've seen people with no education in the field turn out to be people that I admire quite a bit.""If I don't see my kids for six days, I start to get withdrawal pains.""If you don't think you want to go on a train and read the paper every day and work from nine to six at night, there was something about the uncertainty when I was younger which was very attractive.""In Europe, people in the arts are considered part of the intelligentsia; they are considered part of the elite.""Involvement in public affairs is a legitimate use of celebrity.""It made me think about a whole area of human activity that was not really a concern to me before that, because I was involved in reading Chinese history, or languages, or whatever.""It's not like I'm the most famous person in the world.""Nobody has a franchise on what is good.""Nothing gets a bigger laugh than when you refer to things like ethics or human rights.""The twentieth century has exhibited a barbarism and lack of respect for human life on a massive scale just about unknown before.""Then I realized that to be really good at this requires a lot of energy and concentration and skill.""Too often in the past, U.S. leaders have forced Israel to pay the price for American strategic interests in the Middle East - through concessions in the peace process as well as passivity in the face of Iraqi attacks.""Two, I actually learned a lot of things that served me very well when it came to repeating performances on stage, because it is a craft and you do need a technique for it.""You have to think an awful lot about your motivations or people's behavioral intentions or what their body language can indicate or what's really going on or what makes people sometimes do, sometimes, the irrational things they do."
Silver was born in New York, New York, the son of May (née Zimelman), a substitute teacher, and Irving Roy Silver, a clothing sales executive. Silver was raised Jewish on the Lower East Side of Manhattan and attended The East Side Hebrew Institute ("ESHI") and then Stuyvesant High School. He went on to graduate from SUNY at Buffalo with a Bachelor of Arts in Spanish and Chinese, and received a Master's Degree in Chinese History from St. John's University in New York and the College of Chinese Culture in Taiwan. He also attended Columbia University's Graduate School of International Affairs and studied acting at the Herbert Berghof Studio.
Silver made his film debut in Tunnel Vision in 1976. From 1976-78, he had a recurring role as Gary Levy in the sitcom Rhoda, a spin-off from The Mary Tyler Moore Show.
Additional screen roles include a performance as the devoted son of Anne Bancroft in Garbo Talks (1984), an incompetent detective in Eat and Run (1986), the pistol-wielding psychopath stalking Jamie Lee Curtis in 1989's Blue Steel, and the lead in Paul Mazursky's Oscar-nominated A Love Story (1989).
Silver starred opposite Jerry Lewis in the critically acclaimed "Garment District Arc" of the crime show Wiseguy (1988). He often said in interviews that growing up the son of a man working in the garment industry was a great help in preparing for the role.
He portrayed defense attorney Alan Dershowitz in the true story Reversal of Fortune (1990), based on the trial of Claus von Bülow. He played a film producer in Best Friends opposite Burt Reynolds and Goldie Hawn and a famous film director in a 1992 movie that Billy Crystal starred in and directed, Mr. Saturday Night.
Silver was featured as Muhammad Ali's boxing trainer and cornerman Angelo Dundee in the biopic Ali (2001), directed by Michael Mann.
In 1998, he starred opposite Kirstie Alley for season two of her TV comedy series Veronica's Closet. From 2001-02 and again from 2005—06, he had a recurring role as presidential campaign advisor Bruno Gianelli on the NBC series The West Wing.
Silver provided the narration for the 2004 political documentary film FahrenHYPE 9/11 that was produced as a conservative political response to the award-winning and controversial Michael Moore documentary film, Fahrenheit 9/11.
He portrayed tennis player Bobby Riggs in the TV docudrama "When Billie Beat Bobby," the story of Riggs' exhibition match against Billie Jean King.
Silver portrayed Robert Shapiro in one of the most watched television shows of all time, American Tragedy, the story of the O.J. Simpson trial.
One of his final film performances was as a judge in another true story, 2006's Find Me Guilty, directed by Sidney Lumet and starring Vin Diesel.
From 1991 to 2000, Silver served as president of the Actors' Equity Association.
In February 2008, Silver began hosting The Ron Silver Show on Sirius Satellite Radio, which focused on politics and public affairs. The show aired live from 9–11am ET, during morning drive time, on Indie Talk, Sirius 110.
Silver travelled to more than 30 countries and spoke fluent Mandarin Chinese and Spanish. He taught at the high school level and was a social worker for the Department of Social Services.
In 1975 he married another social worker, later Self magazine editor, Lynne Miller. The marriage lasted until 1997.
He was a co-founder in 1989 of the entertainment industry political advocacy organization the Creative Coalition.
Silver was a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. In 2000, he co-founded the organization One Jerusalem to oppose the Oslo Peace Agreement. Its purpose is to maintain "a united Jerusalem as the undivided capital of Israel."
Silver, a Democrat for many years, left the party and became an Independent, and a supporter of President George W. Bush after the September 11, 2001 attacks, citing those attacks and Democratic policies regarding terrorism as reasons. He spoke at the United States 2004 Republican National Convention, continued to support President Bush, and was appointed Chairman for the Millennium Committee by New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani.
Silver and some of his friends said that following his endorsement of President Bush he was ostracized by erstwhile friends and onetime colleagues. In Silver's blog on the Pajamas Media website, he also remarked that his colleagues on the set of The West Wing referred to him as "Ron, Ron, the Neo-Con." But Silver thought of himself as a liberal.
On October 7, 2005, Silver was nominated by President Bush to be a Member of the Board of Directors of the United States Institute of Peace. On September 8, 2006, it was announced that Silver had joined an advisory committee to the Lewis Libby Legal Defense Trust.
President George W. Bush appointed Silver to serve on the Honorary Delegation to accompany him to Jerusalem for the celebration of the 60th anniversary of the State of Israel in May 2008.
In one of his last televised interviews, he told Sky News that Senator John McCain's choice of Sarah Palin as his Vice-Presidential candidate in the 2008 Presidential Election had been a "deal breaker" for him. He ended up voting for Obama and according to the obituary printed by the New York Times, Silver's brother noted that "Ron had ended up voting for Obama in the end".
Silver died on March 15, 2009 of esophageal cancer, which had been diagnosed two years earlier. He was 62 years old. Silver is survived by both parents, brothers Mitchell and Keith, son Adam, and daughter Alexandra.
