1944-2023 Farewell to Law & Order: SVU Actor Richard Belzer

The stand-up comic turned TV cop starred on crime dramas for 22 seasons

- EMILY STROHM

In 1993, with two decades in the entertainment industry under his belt, Richard Belzer, then 48, revealed to People the secret of his success: “I’ve been cynical and angry about this business, but I never gave up.”

Belzer didn’t know it then, but the best was yet to come. As Detective John Munch—first on NBC’s Homicide: Life on the Streets and later on the Law & Order spinoffSVU—Belzer would become one of the most beloved cops in TV history. “I would never be a detective, but if I were, that’s how I’d be,” he once said of the character’s blunt demeanor and dark sense of humor. “They write to all of my paranoia, antiestablishment dissonance and conspiracy theories, so it’s a lot of fun for me. ”