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Mark Blum was an actor’s actor, a veteran of stage, film and television who devoted his life to the craft while graciously sharing his gifts with others. This made him perfectly suited to teach acting, a role to which he applied himself with equal vigor and commitment in his later years.
The New Jersey-born actor, who died on March 25 from complications associated with COVID-19 at New York-Presbyterian Hospital, was a fixture of the city’s theater community since the mid-1970s, with credits spanning some of the most popular works of the past half century.
At the time of his passing, Blum, 69, who had asthma, was the director of the Uta Hagen Institute’s Hagen Core Training at New York’s HB Studio. Alumni of the esteemed nonprofit acting studio include Candice Bergen, Robert De Niro, Bette Midler, Liza Minnelli, and Al Pacino. Since 2018, Blum served as the director of the one-year training program, an integrated progressive curriculum of classes.
“When I think of Mark, the fundamental decency of the man always comes to mind,” says Edith Meeks, executive and artistic director of HB Studio. “Watching him in the classroom, I understood that he was never trying to tell his students what to do; he was always trying to steer them toward their own discoveries, to unfold the problem to them and give them a chance to begin to solve it.”
“Every student is different,” Blum wrote in his teaching statement for the program. “My job is to be a diagnostician, identifying the particular issues holding an actor back from reaching his or her potential, then nudging them towards finding, and owning, the keys to their own freedom.”
Blum, who was a member of the studio’s Artistic Council, was beloved by both his students and colleagues.
“Mark was so in tune with his students as actors. He always met them exactly where they were, and with respect and genuine encouragement. Little wonder the outpouring of heartfelt responses from students,” says Carol Rosenfeld, founding director of the Hagen Core Program. “His inclusiveness knew no bounds. When he was in a play, On- or Off-Broadway, he enlisted cast members to do talkbacks with his class after the performance. You can imagine how inspiring and encouraging this was for his students.”
Mark Jeffrey Blum was born on May 14, 1950, in Newark, N.J., and raised nearby in Maplewood, N.J. There, at Columbia High School, he was an enthusiastic participant in drama productions but was reluctant to acknowledge his passion for the stage. Blum received a BA in theater from the University of Pennsylvania, where he helped create a theater curriculum (which, at the time, was not offered by the university), and next earned an MFA in acting from the University of Minnesota, where he received formal theatrical training via a special program in association with the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis.
After graduating, he toured extensively with the National Shakespeare Company before settling in New York City, where he made his stage debut in Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard (1976). He made his Broadway debut a year later in Arnold Wesker’s The Merchant (based on Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice).
In 1989, Blum’s career reached new heights when he won an Obie Award for his performance as a playwright who travels back in time to meet Gustav Mahler in the Playwrights Horizons production of Albert Innaurato’s Gus and Al. Blum also starred in the original Off-Broadway production of Kenneth Lonergan’s The Waverly Gallery in 2000, and his other Broadway credits included Neil Simon’s Lost in Yonkers (1991), the Tony-nominated revival of Reginald Rose’s 12 Angry Men (2004), and Gore Vidal’s The Best Man (2012).
“Mark was an extraordinary actor, an actor of high analytical intelligence. These things do not always come together as beautifully as they did in Mark — that combination of instinct, courage to play, and capacity for self-examination,” Meeks says. “These things also made him an extraordinary teacher: alive to the possibilities and youthful perspective in his students, and able to think creatively with them about how to use those assets.”
A quick scan of Blum’s TV and movie credits demonstrates how versatile he was as a performer. After making his film debut in the 1983 Dudley Moore romantic comedy Lovesick, he went on to appear in Blake Edwards’s slapstick comedy Blind Date (1987) and the Sean Connery thriller The Presidio (1988).
His television debut came in a 1984 episode of St. Elsewhere, and he went on to appear in Miami Vice, Roseanne, Frasier, NYPD Blue, Law & Order, The Sopranos, and Succession, as well as The Good Wife and its 2019 spin off, The Good Fight. He enjoyed a recurring role as the piccolo-playing “Union Bob” in Amazon’s Mozart in the Jungle (2014-2018), and reached new audiences with a pivotal role in season one of the Netflix psychological thriller “You” (2018).
“Mark was also a sharp wit and a great ironic chronicler of life as a character actor,” Meeks said. “I am remembering the peals of laughter from down the hall as Mark described in trenchant detail the latest pervert he’d been hired to play on some overblown series drama.”
Active in all facets of the job, Blum was a Screen Actors Guild and SAG-AFTRA board member, serving from 2007–2013.
He is survived by his wife, the actress Janet Zarish; his mother; and his sister, Nancy Blum Litt.
