Long Beach Actor Appears in Nearly 200 Roles

Born and raised in Long Beach, Ed Lauter has appeared in nearly 200 roles during a 40-year career, playing characters from a cowboy to a cop. You may remember the 73-year-old actor as the butler in “The Artist,” which won the Academy Award for Best Picture this year, or perhaps from “The Great White Hope” on Broadway.

Lauter returned to New York from Los Angeles this week and sat down with the Wall Street Journal for a brief interview, in which he talked about Alfred Hitchcock and his plans while back in the Big Apple (Subscription required):

Your first movie roles were in westerns. Where does a kid from Long Beach learn the cowboy way?

"I was always kind of athletic and figured I could pick it up pretty good."