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50-536: Jonathan Niven Cryer (born April 16, 1965) is an American actor. Born into a show business family, he made his motion picture debut as a teenage photographer in the romantic comedy No Small Affair (1984); his breakout role was as Duckie in the John Hughes -written film Pretty in Pink (1986). He wrote and produced the independent film Went to Coney Island on a Mission from God... Be Back by Five (1998). In 2003, he

100-677: A Scottish Covenanter soldier who was captured during the Battle of Dunbar in 1650, and endured horrific conditions as a prisoner. He was then transported to America an indentured servant to work at the Saugus Iron Works at Lynn, Massachusetts. As part of his research for the episode, Cryer visited the site of the Battle of Dunbar, Durham Cathedral in Durham , North East England – where surviving Scottish prisoners were held until they were indentured – and

150-517: A heart attack . He went on to appear in small roles in films and television films. Cryer made his film breakthrough as Philip F. "Duckie" Dale in the John Hughes -scripted film Pretty in Pink . In an interview with the Daily News , Cryer's mother Gretchen said that after Pretty in Pink , she started getting calls from teenage girls from all over the world, who would leave hysterical, giggling messages on her answering machine. Cryer then starred in

200-506: A Half Men costar Charlie Sheen in the Jim Abrahams comedy Hot Shots! , which was received very positively. Cryer is frequently linked to the Brat Pack . In a March 2009 interview on Anytime with Bob Kushell , Cryer stated that he had auditioned for St. Elmo's Fire but was not cast in a role. In 1993, he was asked to audition for the role of Chandler Bing on Friends , while doing

250-617: A Mafia-type association in 2010, under Article 416 bis of the Italian penal code. Italy's highest court of last resort, the Supreme Court of Cassation , had ruled similarly on 30 March 2010. The word Mafia ( English: / ˈ m ɑː f i ə / ; Italian: [ˈmaːfja] ) derives from the Sicilian adjective mafiusu , which, roughly translated, means 'swagger', but can also be translated as 'boldness' or ' bravado '. In reference to

300-459: A desire to appear in NCIS since it premiered in 2003. Pursuing a passion for criminal justice, Cryer joined the team of the popular podcast Undisclosed where he will be voicing the weekly addendum episode for the second season. On May 21, 2018, Cryer was featured in the season 9 premiere of genealogy program Who Do You Think You Are? Cryer uncovered the dramatic tale of his ancestor James Adams,

350-507: A man, mafiusu ( mafioso in Italian) in 19th century Sicily signified 'fearless', 'enterprising', and 'proud', according to scholar Diego Gambetta . In reference to a woman, however, the feminine-form adjective mafiusa means 'beautiful' or 'attractive'. Because Sicily was once an Islamic emirate from 831 to 1072, Mafia may have come to Sicilian through Arabic , although the word's origins are uncertain. Possible Arabic roots of

400-415: A photo of Laura ( Demi Moore ) while shooting the pier and falls in love with her when he develops the picture. Enlarging the photo, Charles circulates the area, looking for her, even checks with local police with no luck. When his big brother Leonard and his fiancée come into town, they sneak him into a bar, where he sees her sing. Photographing her by the stage, the bouncer tries to drag him out and finally

450-480: A play in London. His reading was videotaped by a British casting agent but the tape failed to arrive in the U.S. before the network had made its final decision. In 1995, Cryer was cast as Bob in the sitcom Partners , which, like his prior show The Famous Teddy Z , was canceled after its first season. In an interview with Time Out New York he stated, "Hey, every show I'm in goes down. Think about this: George Clooney

500-472: A rehearsal, Barkin was replaced by Demi Moore . No Small Affair grossed a little over $ 4.9 million against an $ 8.5 million budget, which made the film a box office failure. No Small Affair received a mixed critical response. The film holds a 57% rating on Rotten Tomatoes based on seven reviews. The Christian Science Monitor 's David Sterritt wrote "Jerry Schatzberg,...who worked with still pictures before moving to cinema, he cares more about capturing

550-703: A teenager, and is a 1983 graduate of the Bronx High School of Science . He was classmates with screenwriter and film director Boaz Yakin . To his mother's "great disappointment," he skipped college and went to the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London, England, for a summer short course in Shakespeare. Cryer's first professional acting effort was as David in the Broadway play Torch Song Trilogy , replacing Matthew Broderick , whom he "closely resembled." He reprised

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600-402: A wedding reception. Caught by the father of the bride, Charles convinces him to let Laura literally sing for their supper. Using the publicity photos he took, and all of his savings, Charles attempts to boost her performing career by starting an ad campaign without her knowing on the city's taxis — with unexpected results. Added to the taxi ads was a short article that goes national, explaining

650-524: Is an actor and singer who originally studied to be a minister . His paternal grandfather, the Rev. Donald Walter Cryer, was a prominent Methodist minister. He has two sisters, Robin and Shelly. When Cryer was twelve years old, he decided he wanted to become an actor. When his mother heard this, she thought he should have a backup plan, and joked, "Plumbing is a pretty good career." Cryer attended Stagedoor Manor Performing Arts Training Center for several summers as

700-544: Is just addicted to feeling important. I think if anybody is under the delusion that he cares about anybody in America besides himself, they are stoned and need to rethink their priorities, 'cause it's just ridiculous that he's gotten as far as he has." Cryer was an active supporter of the 2023 Writers Guild of America strike and also a supporter of the 2023 SAG-AFTRA strike . No Small Affair The 16-year-old amateur photographer Charles ( Jon Cryer ) accidentally takes

750-443: Is to ask the local mafioso to oversee the transaction, in exchange for a fee proportional to the value of the transaction but below the legal tax. If the butcher cheats the grocer by selling rotten meat, the mafioso will punish the butcher. If the grocer cheats the butcher by not paying on time and in full, the mafioso will punish the grocer. Punishment might take the form of a violent assault or vandalism against property. The grocer and

800-591: The Fox sitcom Getting Personal , alongside Vivica A. Fox and Duane Martin . Although the show was picked up for a second season after its abbreviated spring run, it was canceled that fall, after airing 17 episodes in total. In 1999, Cryer appeared as Neal in Jeffrey Sweet 's play Bluff at the Victory Gardens Theater . In 2000, he was cast as the lead in a comedy series called The Trouble With Normal . For

850-568: The New York Philharmonic at Lincoln Center . The all-star cast was headed by Neil Patrick Harris and Patti LuPone . The concert subsequently aired on PBS's Great Performances . Cryer made a guest appearance on the sitcom series Husbands in its second season. He was initially cast to voice the lead character in DisneyToon Studios ' animated film Planes , a spin-off of Pixar 's Cars franchise , but later dropped out and

900-511: The Sci-Fi Channel 's reimagined Battlestar Galactica at around the same time, but the role went to James Callis .) Cryer earned seven Primetime Emmy Award nominations and two wins for his acting work on the show. In a comment on the show's high ratings, he said: "When you're on a show that's fighting for survival every week, you stop trusting your instincts, because you think, 'My instincts haven't worked so far.' But when people clearly like

950-457: The gaydar is going off, doesn't mean your instruments aren't faulty. I've had to live with that, and that's OK." Also in 2012, he told Jeff Probst that when he and Joyner started dating, she wondered if he might be gay because "he never kissed me." Cryer was asked in 2014 if he was "mistaken for gay"; he called himself "an effeminate heterosexual dork" and made a tongue-in-cheek remark about never being propositioned: "Fellas, you're dropping

1000-584: The 1987 film Hiding Out as a stockbroker on the run from a Mafia hit man. His mother Gretchen played his aunt. The film broke even, but Cryer's performance as a character who was much older than him was critically acclaimed. In 1989, he got the lead role in the TV comedy series The Famous Teddy Z . His performance gained poor reviews and the show was canceled after the first season. In 1990 Cryer appeared as Sandy in an Off-Broadway adaptation of Carnal Knowledge . That same year he appeared alongside future Two and

1050-611: The Mafia's function in the Sicilian economy. Suppose a grocer wants to buy meat from a butcher without paying sales tax to the government. Because this is a black market deal, neither party can take the other to court if the other cheats. The grocer is afraid that the butcher will sell him rotten meat. The butcher is afraid that the grocer will not pay him. If the butcher and the grocer cannot get over their mistrust and refuse to trade, they would both miss out on an opportunity for profit. Their solution

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1100-516: The May 5, 2016, episode of the podcast Never Not Funny , "I have been pointing out, and I have been screaming to the rooftops, that Donald Trump is the Charlie Sheen of politics ... I have to tell you, I love Charlie Sheen, I loved working with him when he was sober, but he was, he's full of shit. He has been full of shit, he has serious addiction. His addiction is obviously serious, drugs, and, but, Trump

1150-440: The Saugus Iron Works national historic site. Cryer said: "Seeing the resilience of my family over centuries, you can see the legacy he left. I can't help but feel lucky...clearly, the resilience of my family, that spine of steel, was not something that came from nowhere. Moving forward, I'm going to take James Adams' strength as my inspiration and know that when you go through very, very difficult times, if you can turn around and help

1200-539: The Sicilian Mafia or the Italian-American Mafia and sometimes Italian organized crime in general (e.g., Camorra , 'Ndrangheta , etc.). Today the 'Ndrangheta, originating in the southern Italian region of Calabria , is widely considered the richest and most powerful Mafia in the world. The 'Ndrangheta has been around for as long as the better-known Sicilian Cosa Nostra, but was only recently designated as

1250-481: The ad and their story. Laura has a huge gig, and a major record label picks her up. Before she moves to L.A., Charles stops by her place, spends the night and loses his virginity. No Small Affair originally went into production in 1981, under director Martin Ritt , and planned to star Matthew Broderick and Sally Field in the lead roles. Production was shut down two weeks in as Ritt suffered health problems. Mark Rydell

1300-695: The arbitration of disputes between criminals, as well as the organization and enforcement of illicit agreements between criminals through the use of threat or violence. Mafias often engage in secondary activities such as gambling , loan sharking , drug-trafficking , prostitution , and fraud . The term Mafia was originally applied to the Sicilian Mafia . Since then, the term has expanded to encompass other organizations of similar methods and purpose, e.g. "the Russian Mafia" or "the Japanese Mafia". The term

1350-648: The ball." Prior to the 2008 presidential election , Cryer attended a fundraiser hosted by the McCain campaign and, according to news reports, endorsed John McCain . When Cryer did not make a public endorsement for the 2012 race , his spokeswoman said that the 2008 report aligning him with the Republican Party was a "mistake" and that Cryer was "not really political." He had attended events for both Republicans and Democrats "because he wanted to hear what both sides had to say." In regard to Donald Trump , Cryer opined on

1400-512: The butcher both fear the mafioso, so each honors their side of the bargain. All three parties profit. Introduced by Pio La Torre , article 416-bis of the Italian Penal Code defines a Mafia-type association (Italian: associazione di tipo mafioso ) as one where "those belonging to the association exploit the potential for intimidation which their membership gives them, and the compliance and omertà which membership entails and which lead to

1450-445: The cops do, but he finds out her name is Laura. The lead guitarist of Laura's band quits, so she is about to lose her job. Although rejected at first by the 22-year-old, Charles offers to photograph her. That night, he convinces his brother and friends to move the stag night to her bar. Even though Charles had increased the numbers that night, Laura's band was still cut, so she let him do a shoot. Afterwards, they dress up to sneak into

1500-494: The groups and families that comprise the Sicilian Mafia that other criminal groups are given the label. Giovanni Falcone , an anti-Mafia judge murdered by the Sicilian Mafia in 1992, objected to the conflation of the term Mafia with organized crime in general: While there was a time when people were reluctant to pronounce the word "Mafia" ... nowadays people have gone so far in the opposite direction that it has become an overused term ... I am no longer willing to accept

1550-706: The habit of speaking of the Mafia in descriptive and all-inclusive terms that make it possible to stack up phenomena that are indeed related to the field of organized crime but that have little or nothing in common with the Mafia. Scholars such as Diego Gambetta and Leopoldo Franchetti have characterized the Sicilian Mafia as a cartel of private protection firms whose primary business is protection racketeering : they use their fearsome reputation for violence to deter people from swindling, robbing, or competing with those who pay them for protection. For many businessmen in Sicily, they provide an essential service when they cannot rely on

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1600-461: The people around you who had it even worse, that's real strength. And I aspire to be one of those people." On November 16, 2018, it was announced that Cryer had been cast as Lex Luthor on The CW's Supergirl in a recurring role. (He had previously played Lenny Luthor, Lex Luthor's nephew, in the 1987 film Superman IV: The Quest for Peace .) His first appearance in the fifteenth episode of Season 4, titled "O Brother, Where Art Thou?". He reprised

1650-499: The police and judiciary to enforce their contracts and protect their properties from thieves (this is often because they are engaged in black market deals). The [Sicilian] Mafia's principal activities are settling disputes among other criminals, protecting them against each other's cheating, and organizing and overseeing illicit agreements, often involving many agents, such as illicit cartel agreements in otherwise legal industries. Scholars have observed that many other societies around

1700-627: The recurring role of the Earth-38 Lex Luthor in the CW series Supergirl , Arrow , and Batwoman . After appearing on the podcast Crime Writers On... it was announced that he would join the Undisclosed podcast for their second season. Cryer was born in New York City . His mother, Gretchen Cryer (née Kiger), is a playwright, songwriter, actress and singer. His father, Donald David Cryer ,

1750-484: The role in San Francisco and Los Angeles. He was later a standby and replacement for Broderick as Eugene Jerome in the original Broadway production of Neil Simon 's Brighton Beach Memoirs in 1984. At age 19, Cryer appeared in the 1984 romantic comedy film No Small Affair , in the lead role as Charles Cummings, after the original production with Matthew Broderick was shut down when director Martin Ritt suffered

1800-669: The role in the Batwoman and The Flash episodes of the Arrowverse crossover Crisis on Infinite Earths . On April 15, 2019, Cryer joined other WGA writers in firing their agents as part of the WGA 's stand against the ATA and the practice of packaging . Cryer married British actress Sarah Trigger in 1999, with whom he has a son, Charlie Austin. They divorced in 2004. On a February 2007 episode of The Tonight Show with Jay Leno , he announced that he

1850-451: The series; Sheen was fired in March 2011 and Cryer's on-screen son Angus T. Jones left the series at the end of season 10. In 2008, Cryer appeared with Laurence Fishburne and James Cromwell in the film Tortured , and in 2009 co-starred with James Spader in the film Shorts . In 2011, Cryer played the role of David in a concert staging of Stephen Sondheim 's musical Company with

1900-412: The show and are watching it in great numbers, it takes a huge amount of pressure off you. It allows you to trust your instincts and go with what has worked for you before." After Sheen's departure from the series, Cryer's character became the show's main protagonist (with Ashton Kutcher being cast as the co-lead) during the final four seasons. Cryer is the only actor to have appeared in every episode of

1950-411: The term krysha . With the [Russian] state in collapse and the security forces overwhelmed and unable to police contract law, ... cooperating with the criminal culture was the only option. ... most businessmen had to find themselves a reliable krysha under the leadership of an effective vor . In his analysis of the Sicilian Mafia, Gambetta provided the following hypothetical scenario to illustrate

2000-400: The third time, Cryer starred in a show which was canceled after its first season. Cryer's long run of unsuccessful TV projects finally ended in 2003. Against the wishes of CBS executives (who were aware of his past failures) and due to a friendship with Charlie Sheen, he was cast as Alan Harper on the hit comedy series Two and a Half Men . (He had auditioned for the role of Gaius Baltar on

2050-418: The use of the term Mafia began appearing in the Italian state's early reports on the phenomenon. The word made its first official appearance in 1865 in a report by the prefect of Palermo Filippo Antonio Gualterio  [ it ] . The term Mafia was never officially used by Sicilian mafiosi, who prefer to refer to their organization as " Cosa Nostra ". Nevertheless, it is typically by comparison to

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2100-497: The visual charms of San Francisco than smoothly unfolding the happy-sad story. The result is friendly but bland". Mafia " Mafia ", as an informal or general term, is often used to describe criminal organizations that bear a strong similarity to the original Mafia in Sicily , to the Italian-American Mafia , or to other organized crime groups from Italy . The central activity of such an organization would be

2150-661: The word include: The public's association of the word with the criminal secret society was perhaps inspired by the 1863 play I mafiusi di la Vicaria ('The Mafiosi of the Vicaria') by Giuseppe Rizzotto and Gaspare Mosca. The words Mafia and mafiusi are never mentioned in the play. The play is about a Palermo prison gang with traits similar to the Mafia: a boss, an initiation ritual, and talk of umirtà ( omertà or code of silence) and pizzu (a codeword for extortion money). The play had great success throughout Italy. Soon after,

2200-462: The world have criminal organizations of their own that provide the same sort of protection service. For instance, in Russia, after the collapse of communism, the state security system had all but collapsed, forcing businessmen to hire criminal gangs to enforce their contracts and protect their properties from thieves. These gangs are popularly called "the Russian Mafia" by foreigners, but they prefer to go by

2250-611: Was cast in a co-leading role as Alan Harper on the CBS sitcom Two and a Half Men , which became a major hit for twelve seasons, and for which he won two Primetime Emmy Awards (in 2009 and 2012). He received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for Television in 2011. Cryer's other film appearances include Morgan Stewart's Coming Home (1987), Hot Shots! (1991), Holy Man (1998), Weather Girl (2009), Company (2011), and Big Time Adolescence (2019). He also has appeared in

2300-532: Was coined by the press and is informal; the criminal organizations themselves have their own names (e.g. the Sicilian Mafia and the related Italian-American Mafia refer to their organizations as "Cosa Nostra"; the "Japanese Mafia" calls itself "Ninkyō dantai", but is more commonly known as " Yakuza " by the public; "Russian Mafia" groups often call themselves " bratva "). "Chinese Mafia" groups are often referred to as Triads . When used alone and without any qualifier, "Mafia" or "the Mafia" typically refers to either

2350-441: Was considered as a possible replacement for Ritt, but the production was scrapped. Producer William Sackheim remained committed to the project and screenwriters Michael Leeson and Terence Mulcahy were brought on to do rewrites (with Mulcahy getting credit on the screenplay with Craig Bolotin ). In 1984, the film was restarted with director Jerry Schatzberg and the lead roles were re-cast with Jon Cryer and Ellen Barkin . After

2400-547: Was engaged to entertainment reporter Lisa Joyner , whom he married in Mexico in June 2007. On September 29, 2009, they announced that they had adopted a baby girl. When Pretty in Pink co-star Molly Ringwald told Out magazine in 2012 that she believed Cryer's character in the film, Duckie, was gay, Cryer stated, "I respectfully disagree. I want to stand up for all the slightly effeminate dorks that are actually heterosexual. Just 'cause

2450-541: Was in 28 pilots, or something. It means nothing." After guest starring on shows such as Dharma & Greg and The Outer Limits , he wrote, produced and co-starred in the film Went to Coney Island on a Mission from God... Be Back by Five . It debuted in 1998 at the Los Angeles Film Festival and gained positive reviews from critics. Leonard Maltin from Playboy Magazine called it "a breath of fresh air." That same year, Cryer landed in another TV series,

2500-444: Was replaced by Dane Cook . Cryer did however receive a credit on the film for "additional story material." In 2015, Cryer released a memoir, So That Happened , a breezy, often comic tale chronicling Cryer's 30-year career on stage, film and television. Cryer currently appears in the drama series NCIS , where he currently plays Navy Dr. Cyril Taft who treats NCIS Special Agent Leroy Jethro Gibbs ( Mark Harmon ). Cryer had expressed

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