John Mahoney, Tony Winner & Frasier Star, Dies at 77

John Mahoney, the beloved star of stage and screen who earned a 1986 Tony Award and saw small-screen success as retired cop Martin Crane on TV's Frasier, died on February 4 in Chicago, according to The Hollywood Reporter. 

A veteran of Chicago's Steppenwolf Theatre, Mahoney made his New York stage debut in Lyle Kessler's Orphans (1985), earning a Theatre World Award for his performance. He followed up that turn with the off-Broadway-debut mounting of John Guare's The House of Blue Leaves (1986). Mahoney was honored with the Clarence Derwent Award for his performance as Artie Shaughnessy in Guare's play, which transferred to Broadway and won Mahoney the Tony Award for Best Featured Actor in a Play.

Mahoney's most-known screen role came in that of Martin Crane, dad to Kelsey Grammer's Frasier and David Hyde Pierce's Niles, on the Emmy-winning sitcom Frasier (1993–2004), a spinoff of Cheers. For his turn on the show, Mahoney earned two Emmy and two Golden Globe Award nominations. Mahoney's other screen credits included Tin Men (1987), Moonstruck (1987), Suspect (1987), Eight Men Out (1988), Say Anything (1989) and Atlantis: The Lost Empire (2001).

Mahoney's final off-Broadway credit was Frank D. Gilroy's The Subject Was Roses (1991). The actor returned to the Great White Way in 2007 to appear in a revival of Craig Lucas' Prelude to a Kiss, Mahoney's second and final Broadway credit.

Mahoney never married and did not have children.