Dan Ziskie, the familiar character actor who portrayed lots of government officials during his long career and the New Orleans construction magnate CJ Liquori on HBO’s Treme, has died. He was 80.
Ziskie died July 21 in New York of arteriosclerotic cardiovascular disease, his family announced.
“Dan was a man of remarkable talent and a keen observer of life,” they wrote. “He was as vibrant and multifaceted as the characters he portrayed on stage and screen.”
The Detroit native played NFL commissioner Paul Tagliabue in Peter Landesman’s Concussion (2015), and his big-screen résumé also included Robert Altman’s O.C. and Stiggs (1985), Chris Columbus’ Adventures in Babysitting (1987), Roger Donaldson’s Thirteen Days (2000) and Charlie Kaufman’s Synecdoche, New York (2008).
As government types, Ziskie recurred as Vice President Jim Mathews on Netflix’s House of Cards from 2013-17, as U.S. senators on CBS’ Person of Interest in 2012 and NBC’s The Blacklist in 2014 and as the U.S. attorney general who orders President Logan (Gregory Itzin) to be dismissed on the fifth-season finale of Fox’s 24 in 2006.
Ziskie recurred as Liquori, who did lots of wheeling and dealing alongside property developer Nelson Hidalgo (Jon Seda), during the last three seasons of Treme from 2011-13.
And fans of Chappelle’s Show know him for his 2004 turn as the dad named Frank Niggar in a popular 1950s-set black-and-white sketch that featured Dave Chappelle as the neighborhood milkman.
Born in Detroit on Aug. 13, 1944, Ziskie excelled in track and football in high school and lettered in relay races at the University of Michigan, where he received his bachelor’s degree in English.
After serving as a crewman on a Great Lakes freighter, Ziskie came to Chicago and worked briefly as a journalist before he switched gears and joined the Second City comedy troupe, working alongside the likes of John Belushi, Joe Flaherty and Brian Doyle-Murray in the early 1970s.
In 1980, he served as an understudy in the Broadway revival of Paul Osborn’s Morning’s at Seven, then was a replacement actor in the original production of Herb Gardner’s 1985-88 comedy I’m Not Rappaport. He would make it to Broadway a third time in the 2004 revival of Arthur Miller’s After the Fall.
Ziskie started banking TV roles in the mid-1980s, finding work on Remington Steele, The Equalizer, Newhart, Hunter, St. Elsewhere, Murphy Brown, L.A. Law and Quantum Leap, among other shows.
Later, he was a regular on the 2013 ABC conspiracy series Zero Hour, which starred Anthony Edwards and lasted just 13 episodes.
Ziskie also showed up on ER, The Practice, Sex and the City, NYPD Blue, Law & Order: Criminal Intent, Ugly Betty, Louie, Gossip Girl, The Good Wife, Gotham, Elementary, Blue Bloods, Madam Secretary and Bull and in such films as Zebrahead (1992), The Jackal (1992), Bad Company (2002), Eight Below (2006), Last Holiday (2006) and Mercy (2016).
His eclectic collection of New York street photography, titled Cloud Chamber, was published in October 2017.
“I am drawn to take photos of people more than anything else,” he said. “You cannot walk the streets, especially here in New York City, without having faces and lives almost force you to pay attention to them.”
He also enjoyed traveling and exploring “such complex topics such as the nature of the cosmos and quantum physics,” his family noted.
Survivors include his brother, David; his sister-in-law, Cynthia; and his nephews Jesse, Brett, and Austin and their six children.