Stuart Pankin (born April 8, 1946) is an American film and television actor.
Pankin was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He attended Dickinson College, where he was a member of Sigma Alpha Epsilon, and Columbia University. One of his earliest film appearances was as asthmatic musician/magician Dudley Laywicker in Hollywood Knights. Pankin played Earl Sinclair in the TV sitcom Dinosaurs and the father on the short-lived sitcom Nearly Departed. Pankin was also an anchor on HBO's Not Necessarily the News and has appeared in numerous TV commercials.
He played an Orthodox Jew in Curb Your Enthusiasm. He has also starred in Zenon: Girl of the 21 Century, Zenon: The Zequel, and Zenon: Z3 as Commander Plank. Pankin also appeared in Honey, We Shrunk Ourselves, as the brother of Wayne Szalinski, and also co-starred as a bossy, self-important lawman in the horror/comedy Arachnophobia.
More recently, Pankin also appeared as an absent-minded professor in a series of edutainment 3D films (Encounter in the Third Dimension and Misadventures in 3D), designed for large-screen IMAX theatres. He is currently a spokesman in infomercials for the Phase 4 Orthotics shoe insert.
Although Pankin is well known for comedy roles and game show appearances, (The $100,000 Pyramid), he has sometimes also taken dramatic roles, such as Michael Douglas' friend Jimmy, who attempts to hit on Glenn Close in Adrian Lyne's hit thriller Fatal Attraction.
Pankin is good friends with actor and Academy-award winner Ernest Borgnine.
