Ed Asner is an American actor, voice actor, and activist. He is best known for his role as Lou Grant in the 1970s and early 1980s on The Mary Tyler Moore Show and its spin-off, Lou Grant.

Ed Asner is an American actor, voice actor, and activist. He is best known for his role as Lou Grant in the 1970s and early 1980s on The Mary Tyler Moore Show and its spin-off, Lou Grant. In 2009, Mr. Asner starred as the voice of Carl Fredricksen in Pixar's animated film, Up.

Asner served for two terms as the president of the Screen Actors Guild. In this capacity, he opposed US foreign policy in Central America, and he played a leading role in the Screen Actors Guild’s strike of 1980. Asner was a prominent member of the movement to establish a single-payer healthcare system in California. He was a former member of the Democratic Socialist Organizing Committee and is a current member of the Democratic Socialists of America. Despite having extremely high ratings, the Lou Grant show was suddenly cancelled in 1982 amid much controversy. The abrupt decision of CBS to not renew the show was probably a reaction to Asner’s left-wing political views and the publicity surrounding them.

In addition to his activism, Ed has been heavily involved in a number of different charitable causes. For example, he is on the Entertainment Board of Directors for The Survivor Mitzvah Project, a nonprofit organization that assists elderly and impoverished Holocaust survivors in Eastern Europe. Asner is a board member for Defenders of Wildlife, and he is a member of the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund, a free speech organization dedicated to protecting comic book creators and retailers from prosecution based on content. Asner is also an advisory board member of Exceptional Minds, a non-profit animation studio for young adults on the autism spectrum. Asner has a child and a grandchild with autism, which has motivated his deep involvement with the nonprofit organization, Autism Speaks. Asner also served on the advisory board of a suburban Chicago company that employs people with autism spectrum disorders to test and program software.

There are many other examples of Ed’s charitable work, including his support of Humane Borders, which maintains water stations in the Sonoran desert with the goal of preventing deaths of undocumented migrants due to dehydration and exposure. During his celebrated acting career, Mr. Asner won seven Primetime Emmy Awards, the most ever won by any man.