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Jerome Bernard Orbach ( October 20 , 1935 – December 28 , 2004 ) was an American Actor best known for his starring role as wisecracking New York Police Department Detective Lennie Briscoe in the '' Law & Order '' Television Series , and for his Musical Theater roles. BIOGRAPHY Orbach was born in The Bronx , a borough of New York City , to Emily Olexy (a Polish American Catholic ) and Leon Orbach, a German Jew of Sephardic descent. He was raised as a Roman Catholic . While he was still a child, his family moved to Mount Vernon , New York ; Wilkes-Barre and Scranton , Pennsylvania ; Springfield , Massachusetts ; and Waukegan , Illinois . He studied drama at Northwestern University , then went to New York, where he studied with Lee Strasberg at the Actors Studio . Orbach was an accomplished Broadway and Off-Broadway actor. His first major role was that of El Gallo in the original cast of the decades-running hit '' The Fantasticks ''. He also starred in '' Carnival! '', the musical version of the movie ''Lili''. He also starred in a revival of '' Guys And Dolls '' ( Tony Award nomination for Best Featured Actor in a Musical), '' Promises, Promises '' (Tony Award for Best Actor in a Musical), the original productions of '' Chicago '' (Tony Award nomination for Best Actor in a Musical) and '' 42nd Street '', and a revival of '' The Cradle Will Rock ''. In the ''. He appeared in only the first two episodes of the series, which aired in March 2005 , after his death. The fifth episode of the series, " Baby Boom ", was dedicated to his memory. 's '' Law & Order ''.]] In early December 2004 , it was announced that Orbach had been receiving treatment for Prostate Cancer since Spring 2004; he died at the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York on December 28 . His agent, Robert Malcolm, announced at the time of his death that Orbach's prostate-cancer had been diagnosed more than ten years before. Orbach was married in 1958 to Marta Curro, with whom he had two sons, Anthony Nicholas and Christopher Benjamin; they Divorce d in 1975 . In 1979 , he married Broadway dancer Elaine Cancilla, whom he met while starring in ''Chicago''. In addition to his sons and both wives, Orbach was survived by his mother. He was named a "Living Landmark", along with fellow castmate Sam Waterston , by the New York Landmarks Conservancy in 2002 . He quipped that the honor meant "that they can't tear me down". Orbach lived in a high-rise off Eighth Avenue in Clinton and was a fixture in that Manhattan neighborhood's restaurants and shops. His glossy publicity photo hangs in Ms. Buffy's French Cleaners, and he was a regular at some of the unpretentious Italian restaurants nearby. On February 5 , 2005 , he was Posthumously awarded a Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Drama Series. __NOTOC__ ROLES Off-Broadway
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