Murray Abraham was born on October 24, 1939, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He was the son of automotive mechanic Fahrid “Fred” Abraham and his wife Josephine (née Stello) (April 15, 1915 – March 10, 2012). Abraham has said that he is Syrian-American.
He rose to prominence thanks to his acclaimed leading role as Antonio Salieri in the drama film Amadeus (1984), for which he was nominated for a BAFTA Award and received nominations for the Academy Award for Best Actor and the Golden Globe Award for Best Actor in a Motion Picture Drama.
In the 1968 play Man in the Glass Booth, Abraham made his Broadway debut. His performances in Anton Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya (1984) and William Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice (2011) earned him the Obie Award for Outstanding Performance. He received a nomination for the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Featured Actor in a Play for his return to Broadway in the 2014 revival of Terrence McNally’s comedy It’s Only a Play.
When he was just five years old, his father fled Mount Lebanon with his family from Muqlus, Ottoman Syria, a small village in the Valley of the Christians; His paternal grandfather was a Greek Orthodox priest in the Antioch Church. One of 14 children, his mother was Italian American and the daughter of an Italian immigrant who worked in Western Pennsylvania’s coal mines. Robert and Jack, his younger brothers, both died in separate car accidents.
Where does F. Murray Abraham live?
F. Murray Abraham lives in New York with his wife of over 50 years while filming the television comedy Taxi 22 (2015).
