Sopranos star Jerry Adler dies at 96: Actor worked with Woody Allen and appeared on The Good Wife

Jerry Adler, the actor and theatre director best known for his long-running role on The Sopranos, has died at 96.

Adler’s death was announced on Saturday by his family and confirmed in a post on X by his friend Frank J. Reilly.

‘The great actor, my friend Jerry Adler died today at the age of 96,’ Reilly wrote, while sharing photos of Adler in some of his best-known roles, as well as a photo of himself with his late friend. ‘You know him from one of his iconic roles had from many of his guest appearances. Not bad for a guy who didn’t start acting until he was 65. Check out his IMDb page.’

The late actor had a decades-long career in the theatre, but he was a late bloomer on screen and only began appearing in films and television in the early 1990s.

One of his first major film roles was in Woody Allen’s acclaimed mystery–comedy Manhattan Murder Mystery in 1993, and he later had major roles on shows including Mad About You, Rescue Me, The Good Wife and Transparent.

But it was his role on the era-defining HBO series The Sopranos as Herman ‘Hesh’ Rabkin that defined Adler’s legacy.

His character was a Jewish loan shark and former recording industry executive who was one of the most trusted advisors to Tony Soprano (played by the late James Gandolfini).

Adler made his series debut on the pilot episode and continued with the series well into its sixth and final season in 2007.

Gandolfini later died in 2013 at age 51 of a heart attack.

Adler’s first major recurring series character was on Mad About You, on which he played the building maintenance man, Mr. Wicker.

He was a recurring character on the later seasons of the Denis Leary starring firefighter series Rescue Me, and he was featured on 30 episodes of CBS’ The Good Wife, as well as two more episodes in which he reprised his character, Howard Lyman, on the sequel series The Good Fight.