George Dzundza

George Dzundza ( ; born July 19, 1945) is an American television and film actor. Other notable work includes The Waltons (1975), Skokie (1981), Open All Night (1981), No Way Out (1987), The Beast (1988). He appeared in The Deer Hunter, Streamers, Impulse, White Hunter Black Heart, The Butcher's Wife, Basic Instinct, Crimson Tide, Dangerous Minds and City by the Sea, Law & Order, and Jesse. Early life and education Dzundza was born in Rosenheim, Germany, to a Ukrainian father, Roman Dzundza, originally from Kalush, Ukraine, and a Polish mother, Maria Humenecka, originally from Lviv, Poland. His parents were forced into factory labour by the Nazis. He spent the first few years of his life in displaced persons camps with his parents and one brother. The family moved to Amsterdam in 1949, then moved to the US in 1956, settling in the Lower East Side of Manhattan in New York City. He attended Xavier High School in Manhattan. He attended St. Johns University and also studied under Stella Adler and Harold Clurman. Career Dzundza began acting in his freshman year of college at the insistence of another student. However, his professional stage debut was in a 1973 New York Shakespeare Festival production of King Lear.