One of the screen's most familiar faces, Charles Durning is the epitome of a character actor, demonstrating versatility and excellence from role to role and often outshining many of the stars he nominally "supports."

After service in World War 2, he worked at numerous jobs, including a ballroom dancing instructor, before theatrical producer Joseph Papp saw him onstage and hired him for the New York Shakespeare Festival. Durning performed in over thirty plays-as well as early films like "Harvey Middleman, Fireman" (1965), "Hi, Mom!," and "I Walk the Line" (both 1970)-before his breakthrough stage performance in the Tony Award-winning drama "That Championship Season" and a role as a crooked cop in the Oscar-winning smash hit "The Sting" (1973).

Since then, he has worked practically nonstop; among his more memorable parts: a policeman trying to negotiate with Al Pacino in "Dog Day Afternoon" (1975), the President in "Twilight's Last Gleaming" (1977), Burt Reynolds' brother in "Starting Over" (1979), a shady businessman in "True Confessions" (1981), Jessica Lange's father who courts Dustin Hoffman in "Tootsie" (1982), a singing, dancing governor of Texas in "The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas" (1982, an Oscar-nominated turn), a Nazi in "To Be or Not to Be" (1983, another Oscar nomination), and an imposing monsignor in "Mass Appeal" (1984).

He won a Tony Award as Big Daddy in the 1989 Broadway revival of "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof" and his TV credits include the marvelous "Queen of the Stardust Ballroom" (1975), "Death of a Salesman" (1985, recreating his role from the Broadway revival with Dustin Hoffman), the short-lived series "The Cop and the Kid" (1975), and Burt Reynolds' "Evening Shade" (1990-94).

OTHER FILMS INCLUDE: 1973: "Sisters" 1974: "The Front Page" 1975: "The Hindenburg" 1977: "The Choirboys" 1978: "The Fury" 1979: "The Muppet Movie," "North Dallas Forty" 1980: "The Final Countdown" 1981: "Sharky's Machine" 1985: "Big Trouble," "The Man With One Red Shoe" 1986: "Tough Guys," "Where the River Runs Black" 1987: "Happy New Year," "The Rosary Murders," "Cop" 1988: "Far North" 1990: "Dick Tracy" 1991: "V.I. Warshawski" 1993: "The Music of Chance" 1994: "The Hudsucker Proxy."

OTHER STAGE WORK INCLUDES: Sir Toby in "Twelfth Night," Trinculo in "The Tempest," Matthew Harrison Brady in "Inherit The Wind"(1997), Weller Martin in "The Gin Game"(1998), Shelly Levine in "Glengarry Glen Ross"(2000), (October 2002): Plays in "The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui" play by Bertolt Brecht (Michael Schimmel Center for the Arts, Pace University, New York City, New York, USA).