Mandy Patinkin
Career > 1989–2004: Established actor

Over the next decade, he continued to appear in movies, including Warren Beatty's action crime comedy Dick Tracy (1990) and Herbert Ross's political comedy True Colors (1991). He also portrayed Alfred de Musset in James Lapine's period drama Impromptu (1991) starring Hugh Grant, Judy Davis, Emma Thompson, and reunited with Bernadette Peters. Dessen Howe of The Washington Post described his performance writing "he makes an effective comic catalyst".
On Broadway, Patinkin appeared in the musical The Secret Garden in 1991 and was nominated for the 1991 Drama Desk Award as Outstanding Actor in a Musical. He also released two solo albums, titled Mandy Patinkin (1989) and Dress Casual (1990). In 1994, Patinkin took the role of Dr. Jeffrey Geiger on CBS's Chicago Hope for which he won the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series. However, despite the award and the ratings success of the show, Patinkin left the show during the second season because he was unhappy spending so much time away from his wife and children. He returned to the show in 1999 at the beginning of the sixth season, but it was canceled in 2000. Since Chicago Hope, Patinkin has appeared in a number of films. However, he has mostly performed as a singer, releasing three more albums. That same year Patinkin returned to theatre this time Broadway musical The Wild Party (2000) portraying Burrs acting opposite Toni Collette as Queenie. The vaudeville like production is based on the 1928 Joseph Moncure March narrative poem of the same name. For his performance he earned a nomination for the Tony Award for Best Actor in a Musical.
During this time he guest-starred in The Simpsons in the episode "Lisa's Wedding" (1995) as Hugh Parkfield, Lisa's future English groom and in The Larry Sanders Show (1996) for which he received a nomination for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Guest Actor in a Comedy Series. He also acted in numerous films such as the drama The Doctor (1991), The Music of Chance (1993), the comedy Life with Mikey (1993), the action adventure Squanto: A Warrior's Tale (1994), and the romantic mystery Lulu on the Bridge (1998). After turning down the role in the Walt Disney Animated film The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1996), he portrayed Quasimodo in the TNT television film The Hunchback (1997) acting opposite Salma Hayek, and Richard Harris. John O'Connor from The New York Times praised his performance writing, "[Patinkin] is surprisingly restrained...His Quasimodo is a gentle and quite moving creature, shyly hiding his facial disfigurations in the shadows". Connor praised the production writing that its "oddly old-fashioned, paying a kind of homage, as does Mr. Patinkin's performance, to the Laughton film."
Mamaloshen, Patinkin's musical production of songs sung entirely in Yiddish, premiered in 1998. He has performed the show on Broadway and in venues around the United States. The recorded version won a Deutscher Schallplattenpreis award in Germany. In 1999, Patinkin co-starred in the second Sesame Street film, The Adventures of Elmo in Grouchland, as Huxley, an abusive, childish, sadistic, and greedy man with abnormally large eyebrows, who steals whatever he can grab and then claims it as his own.
Patinkin returned to Broadway in 2000 in the New York Shakespeare Festival production of Michael John LaChiusa's The Wild Party, earning another Tony Award nomination for Best Actor in a Musical. In 2003 he dubbed a voice in the Walt Disney re-release of Hayao Miyazaki's Castle in the Sky. From 2003 to 2004, he appeared in the Showtime comedy drama Dead Like Me as Rube Sofer. In 2004, he played a six-week engagement of his one-man concert at the Off-Broadway complex Dodger Stages.