Leonard Joseph "Len" Cariou (born September 30, 1939) is a Canadian Tony Award-winning actor.
Born in St. Boniface, Manitoba, Cariou is the son of Molly Estelle (née Moore) and George Marius Cariou, a salesman. He grew up and attended school in St Boniface and later in East Kildonan, Manitoba. ,He attended Holy Cross School Miles MacDonell Collegiate for grades ten and eleven where he directed and starred in the school plays and he later attended St Paul's College,
Cariou started acting in Winnipeg at the Manitoba Theatre Centre and later at the Stratford, Ontario, tackling classical roles like King Lear, Macbeth, Prospero, Coriolanus, Brutus, Petruchio, Iago, Oberon, and Henry V. He was offered a scholarship at the National Theatre School of Canada in Montreal but, married with a young child and financial responsibilities, he rejected it. In 1968, Cariou made his Broadway debut in The House of Atreus. Two years later he landed his first starring role in Applause, a musical adaptation of the film All About Eve. It earned him a Tony Award nomination as Best Actor in a Musical and won him the Theatre World Award. In 1973 he garnered his second Tony nod for A Little Night Music; he repeated the role for the 1977 film version. Six years later he won both the Tony and a Drama Desk Award for his portrayal of Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber Of Fleet Street in the Stephen Sondheim musical. His next projects, the Alan Jay Lerner-Charles Strouse musical Dance a Little Closer (1983), Arthur Miller's sole musical, Up from Paradise (1983), and Teddy & Alice (1987) proved to be far less successful.
In 2002, Cariou joined Anne Heche and Neil Patrick Harris as the replacement cast in the award-winning drama Proof. Cariou's film credits include Flags of Our Fathers, About Schmidt, Thirteen Days, The Four Seasons, and the Harold Prince-directed screen adaptation of A Little Night Music with Elizabeth Taylor. He played the father in the 2007 film 1408. On television, Cariou has appeared in The West Wing, Law & Order, Star Trek: Voyager, The Practice, Ed, The Outer Limits, and multiple episodes of Murder, She Wrote.
Cariou narrated Major League Baseball's World Series films from 1992-1997. He has recorded a number of books, including several by Michael Connelly, for audiotape release. In 2004, he was elected to the American Theatre Hall of Fame.
