Ted Danson

Ted Danson is an American actor whose career has moved between sitcoms, drama, and film, but he is most closely associated with the long-running NBC comedy Cheers. Born Edward Bridge Danson III in San Diego, California, on December 29, 1947, he grew up in Flagstaff, Arizona. He studied drama at Carnegie Mellon University, graduating in 1972, and began working in television during the 1970s.

Danson became a household name as Sam Malone, the bartender at the Boston bar in Cheers. The series, created by James Burrows, Glen Charles, and Les Charles, premiered in 1982. Sam is a former relief pitcher whose baseball career ended amid struggles with alcoholism; when the show begins, he is sober and runs the bar. His on-and-off relationship with Diane Chambers, played by Shelley Long, became one of the show’s defining storylines. Danson continued as Sam after Long left the series, and Cheers ran for 11 seasons, ending in 1993. He received 11 Emmy nominations for the role and won two, in 1990 and 1993.

He later led the CBS sitcom Becker, playing Dr. John Becker, a blunt, irritable physician running a small practice in the Bronx. The comedy aired from 1998 to 2004. Danson also appeared in Damages as Arthur Frobisher, a wealthy businessman at the center of the legal thriller’s first season. That performance showed a darker side of his screen persona than the warmly comic Sam Malone.

In HBO’s Curb Your Enthusiasm, Danson plays a fictionalized version of himself alongside his wife, actress Mary Steenburgen. The couple also appeared together in the sitcom Bored to Death. From 2011 to 2015, Danson played D.B. Russell, a forensic investigator, on CSI: Crime Scene Investigation and its spin-off CSI: Cyber. He returned to network comedy as Michael, an architect of the afterlife, in NBC’s The Good Place. Michael’s evolving understanding of morality and humanity became central to the series, which concluded in 2020 after four seasons.

Danson’s film credits include Three Men and a Baby, the 1987 comedy in which he starred with Tom Selleck and Steve Guttenberg as one of three men unexpectedly caring for an infant. Beyond acting, he has publicly supported ocean conservation. He co-founded the American Oceans Campaign in 1987, an organization that later became part of Oceana, and has written and spoken about threats to marine ecosystems. His career has thus combined enduring television roles with work on environmental causes, while his performances have ranged from sitcom charm to morally ambiguous drama.