Richard Joseph Libertini was well-known for his ability to speak in a variety of accents and for playing character roles. Awakenings (1990), Lethal Weapon 4 (1998), Catch-22 (1970), The In-Laws (1979), Popeye (1980), All of Me (1984), Fletch (1985), Fletch Lives (1989), and Dolphin Tale (1980) are some of his movies (2011).
Libertini attended Emerson College in Boston after being born in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Libertini spent his formative years working in Chicago and New York City. In the 1960s, he relocated to Los Angeles to further his acting career.
He was a founding member of the cast of The Mad Show, an Off-Broadway musical comedy created by Mad magazine in 1966. The Night They Raided Minsky’s (1968), Don’t Drink the Water (1969), and Catch-22 were his first performances in motion pictures (1970).
He played Chevy Chase’s character’s doubting editor in the comedy Fletch (1985), a role he reprised in the 1989 follow-up Fletch Lives, and he played General Garcia, a deranged Latin American dictator, in The In-Laws (1979), whose closest advisor was a cartoon face he drew on his own hand in the style of Senor Wences. In Sharky’s Machine, he played Nosh, Burt Reynolds’s character’s boyhood best buddy and an electronics specialist (1981).
Additionally, he portrayed a travelling vaudeville in Days of Heaven (1978) by Terence Malick, a greengrocer named George W. Geezil in Popeye (1980) by Robert Altman, a Hispanic priest in Best Friends (1982), a servant named Giuseppe in Unfaithfully Yours (1984), a spiritual adviser named Prahka Lasa (“Back in Bowl!”) in All of Me (1984), the bandit Dijon in DuckTales the Movie: (1998).
Libertini played the Godfather in the first season of Soap as a series regular on television. In the episodes “Evaluation” (1978) and “Middle Age” of Barney Miller, he played a variety of personas (January 1979). In the Sonny with a Chance episode “Dakota’s Revenge,” he played the crazed mechanic Izzy, and in the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine episode “Accession,” he played a Bajoran named Akorem Laan. Additionally, he provided the voice of Wally Llama on Animaniacs and starred in three brief sitcoms: Family Man (1988), in which he played a middle-aged comedy writer who married a much younger woman and had children later in life; The Fanelli Boys (1990–1991); and Pacific Station (1991–1992), in which he played a detective. He also voiced Wally Llama on Animaniacs.
Libertini made an appearance in the TV programme Supernatural in September 2008. In the 2011 movie Dolphin Tale, he played a fisherman in his final acting performance. Libertini played a rabbi in the Woody Allen-penned Relatively Speaking episode “Honeymoon Motel” on Broadway from October 2011 to January 2012.
Personal life
Libertini married actress Melinda Dillon on September 30, 1963, and had one child with her, Richard. They divorced in 1978.
Libertini died January 7, 2016, at age 82, in Venice, California, from cancer with which he had been diagnosed two years prior.
