The ED ASNER Only I Knew

THE SON OF THE BELOVED LOU GRANT STAR SHARES HIS FAVORITE MEMORIES WITH CLOSER

- Susan Hornik

Matthew Asner keeps a voicemail message from his late father, actor Ed Asner. "He called me to let me know how proud he was of me," Matthew confides to Closer. "I don't care how old someone is or where they are in life. When a father says this to his son, it is everything. I play it whenever I need a boost."

Like his most famous character, newsman Lou Grant, Ed, who passed away in 2021 at age 91, was an optimist and an idealist with a very big heart. "His belief in the underdog and dedication to the truth would be the ways he was closest to Lou," says Matthew, who was 7 when his father became a household name on The Mary Tyler Moore Show. Ed was initially inspired to play the grouchy editor as a combination of his two real-life older brothers, but as the years went by, Lou and Ed became more similar in every way but one. "While my father did enjoy a drink, he wasn't the hard-drinker that Lou was!"