René Murat Auberjonois (born June 1, 1940) is a American actor, known for portraying Father Mulcahy in the movie version of M*A*S*H and for creating a number of characters in long-running television series, including Clayton Endicott III on Benson (for which he was nominated for an Emmy Award), Odo on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, and attorney Paul Lewiston on Boston Legal.
Auberjonois was born in New York City. His mother was Princess Laure Louise Napoléone Eugénie Caroline (née Murat), a descendant of Joachim Murat, King of Naples, and his wife Caroline Bonaparte, sister of the Emperor Napoléon. His maternal grandmother was an American, from Cincinnati, Ohio, his maternal grandfather's mother was a Russian Noblewoman, and his maternal grandfather's paternal grandmother,Caroline Georgina Fraser, was also an American, from Charleston, South Carolina. His father, Swiss born Fernand Auberjonois (1910–2004), was a Cold War-era foreign correspondent and Pulitzer Prize-nominated writer, and his grandfather, also named René Auberjonois, was a Swiss post-Impressionist painter. He has one brother, as well as, from his mother's first marriage, two half-sisters.
Auberjonois's family moved to Paris after World War II, where at an early age he decided to become an actor.
After a few years in France, the family moved back to the U.S. and joined an artists' colony in Rockland County, New York, whose other residents included Burgess Meredith, John Houseman, and Helen Hayes. The environment confirmed Auberjonois's decision to act, and he made important contacts that were to advance his career. One of the most influential contacts Auberjonois made during this period was Houseman, who gave him his first job in the theater at sixteen years of age as an apprentice. They worked together again later, when Auberjonois taught under Houseman at the Juilliard School, and Auberjonois stated in a 1993 interview that Houseman was the person who had most influenced his career. The Auberjonois family also lived in London, England, where Auberjonois completed high school while studying theatre. To complete his education, Auberjonois attended and graduated from the Carnegie Institute of Technology (now Carnegie Mellon University).
Auberjonois married Judith Mihalyi on October 19, 1963. They have two children, Tessa and Remy, both of whom are also actors.
After college, Auberjonois worked with several different theatre companies, beginning at the prestigious Arena Stage in Washington, D.C. He then traveled between Los Angeles and New York working in numerous theatre productions. Auberjonois helped found the American Conservatory Theatre in San Francisco, the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles, and the Brooklyn Academy of Music Repertory Company in New York.
Eventually, Auberjonois landed a role on Broadway in 1968, and ended up appearing in three plays at once: as Fool to Lee J. Cobb's King Lear (the longest running production of the play in Broadway history), as Ned in A Cry of Players (opposite Frank Langella), and as Marco in Fire!. The next year, he earned a Tony Award for his performance as Sebastian Baye alongside Katharine Hepburn in Coco. Other Tony nominations were for Neil Simon's The Good Doctor (1973, opposite Christopher Plummer); as The Duke in Big River (1984), winning a Drama Desk Award; and, memorably, as Buddy Fidler/Irwin S. Irving in City of Angels (1989), written by Larry Gelbart and Cy Coleman.
Other Broadway appearances include Malvolio in Twelfth Night (1972); Mr. Samsa in Metamorphosis opposite Mikhail Baryshnikov (1989); Professor Abronsius in Dance of the Vampires, Michael Crawford's unsuccessful rewrite of Tanz der Vampire; and Jethro Crouch in Sly Fox (2004, for which he was nominated for an Outer Critics Circle Award). Auberjonois has also appeared many times at the Mark Taper Forum, notably as Malvolio in Twelfth Night and as Stanislavski in Chekhov in Yalta, although his performance as Richard III was not a success. As a member of the Second Drama Quartet, Auberjonois toured with Ed Asner, Dianne Wiest, and Harris Yulin. He also appeared in the Tom Stoppard and Andre Previn work, Every Good Boy Deserves Favor, at the Kennedy Center and the Metropolitan Opera.
Auberjonois is currently making his debut at the Shakespeare Theatre Company as the titular character in Molière's The Imaginary Invalid now playing through July 27, 2008.
Auberjonois has also directed many theatrical productions.
After M*A*S*H, Auberjonois's movie roles have included the gangster Tony in Police Academy 5: Assignment Miami Beach (1988) and Reverend Oliver in The Patriot (2000). He has had some rather exotic cameos in a number of films, including Dr. Burton, a mental asylum doctor patterned after Tim Burton, in Batman Forever, and a bird expert who gradually transforms into a bird in Robert Altman's 1970 film Brewster McCloud. He cameod as Colonel West in the 1991 Star Trek film Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country. Other notable film appearances have included McCabe & Mrs. Miller (1971, starring Warren Beatty), The Hindenburg (1975, co-starring George C. Scott), the first remake of King Kong (1976), The Big Bus (1976), Eyes of Laura Mars (1978), Where The Buffalo Roam (1980), Eulogy, The Feud, and Inspector Gadget (1999). Auberjonois also portrayed the character of Straight Hollander in the 1993 Miramax film The Ballad of Little Jo, In 2004 he did the voice for "Bio-Constrictor" for the Direct-to-DVD movie Max Steel: Endangered Species. He voiced Chef Louis in the 1st and 2nd Little Mermaid films and the Butler in Joseph: King of Dreams.
In addition to being a regular on three TV shows in three different genres (Benson (situation comedy); Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (science fiction); and Boston Legal (legal drama)), Auberjonois has been a guest star on many different television series, including The Rockford Files, Charlie's Angels, The Jeffersons, The Outer Limits, Matlock, Murder, She Wrote, Frasier, Judging Amy, Chicago Hope, Star Trek: Enterprise, Stargate SG-1, The Practice (for which he received another Emmy nomination, playing a different character than the one he has played on The Practice spinoff Boston Legal), and Saving Grace. Television movie credits include Disney's Geppetto, Gore Vidal's The Kid, the remake of the classic, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, and the miniseries Sallie Hemings: An American Scandal (2000). He received a third Emmy Award nomination for his performance in ABC's The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.
Auberjonois has also lent his voice as Janos Audron in three of the Legacy of Kain games, Soul Reaver 2, Blood Omen 2 and Defiance, and he voiced several roles on Batman: The Animated Series, Avatar the Last Airbender, Xiaolin Showdown, Justice League Unlimited, and Max Steel.
Auberjonois has directed some TV shows, including Marblehead Manor and several episodes of Deep Space Nine listed below.
Auberjonois has also been active in radio drama. Among other programs, he read "The Stunt" by Mordechai Strigler for the NPR series Jewish Stories From the Old World to the New. He has also recorded a number of novels on tape. As for film voice-overs, he was heard in Disney's The Little Mermaid (receiving top billing as Chef Louis), and as The Skull in The Last Unicorn. He reprised an animated version of his character Odo from Star Trek: Deep Space Nine in a cutaway joke in Family Guy's Stewie Griffin: The Untold Story. The cutaway featured Odo threatening Stewie's alleged cousin Quark Griffin. He also did the voice of Vanity Smurf from the Smurfs series in the 1980's, and was the voice of Peter Parker on the 1972 Buddha Records Spider-Man LP "From Beyond the Grave" (BDS 5119), a radio-style narrative replete with sound effects and rock and roll song interludes provided by "The Webspinners", in which the characters of The Vulture, The Lizard, The Green Goblin, The Kingpin and Dr. Strange also appeared. Rene also provided the voice for Janos Audron, an ancient vampire in the Legacy of Kain video game series; he was in Soul Reaver 2, Blood Omen 2, and Legacy of Kain: Defiance.
