‘Men in Black,’ ‘Field of Dreams’ actor Mike Nussbaum dead at 99

“Men in Black” and “Field of Dreams” actor Mike Nussbaum has died at age 99. 

He was reportedly the oldest professional working actor in the U.S., according to the Associated Press.

Nussbaum died of natural causes in his Chicago home, just six days shy of his 100th birthday, according to his daughter, Karen. 

“He was a good father and a good man who raised us to care about other people and respect other people and care about justice,” Karen told the AP.

A stage and screen actor and director, Nussbaum received a lifetime achievement award from the League of Chicago Theaters in 2019. At the time, he was proclaimed to be the oldest working member of Actors’ Equity.

Born as Myron Nussbaum in 1923, Nussbaum grew up in Chicago. During World War II, he served as a teletype operator under former President (and then-General) Dwight Eisenhower. 

Nussbaum didn’t get into acting until he was in his 40s – before that, he worked in his family’s exterminating business. 

Nussbaum was a frequent collaborator with Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright, David Mamet, 76, and he played the aging salesman George Aaronow, in the original Broadway production of “Glengarry Glen Ross,” in 1984. 

Other stage credits included Broadway’s “The House of the Blue Leaves,” “Do Black Patent Leather Shoes Really Reflect Up?” and Mamet’s play “Relativity,” where Nussbaum played Albert Einstein in 2017. He also played Shylock in a Chicago Shakespeare Theater production of “The Merchant of Venice” in 2005, and acted in a production of “Hamlet,” when he was 95 years old.

“I think that being an actor in Chicago, over a number of years, is the most satisfying life I could imagine,” Nussbaum told the Sun-Times in 2019.

He went on to say that he found “the desire for fame and glory” to be “overwhelming” in New York and LA. 

“Although I had some success in both cities, I decided my life was more balanced here. I enjoy getting on the bus to go downtown and have someone come up and say, ‘I loved you in such-and-such.’”

He also said he enjoyed working well into his 90s.

“I am gifted and lucky to still be able to do the thing that is the most fun for me in life,” he told WBEZ Chicago in 2019, when he was 94. “As long as I can do it, I will.”

On the screen, Nussbaum played book publisher Bob Drimmer in “Fatal Attraction” (1987), a school principal in “Field of Dreams” (1989) and an alien jeweler in “Men in Black” (1997), whose head famously opens to reveal a small alien creature.

On the small screen, he appeared in shows such as “The X-Files” and “The Equalizer.” 

“It’s the end of an era, the end of the Chicago school of acting,” B.J. Jones, the artistic director of Northlight Theatre, and frequent collaborator with Nussbaum, told the Chicago Sun-Times about Nussbaum’s death.  

“He opened a lot of doors for so many actors here. He loved nothing more than to sit in his dressing room area and absorb the energy of the next generation of actors around him.”

Jones said he visited Nussbaum, who he’d been friends with for 50 years, on Tuesday.

“He said he was bored. Hilarious,” Jones said. “But he was ready to go.”

Nussbaum was married to his first wife, Annette Brenner, for 56 years –  from 1949 until she died in 2003. Together they had three kids: Jack, labor leader Karen, and playwright/novelist Susan, who died in 2022 at age 68 from complications of pneumonia. 

Nussbaum married his second wife, Julie Brudlos, from 2004 until his death. He’s survived by Brudlos, his children Jack and Karen, and seven grandchildren.