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All About Brilliant Minds Guest Star Mandy Patinkin's Career: Movies, TV & More
The Chicago Hope and The Princess Bride star brings his talents to Brilliant Minds for the two-part Season 1 finale.
This story contains major spoilers for the final two episodes of Brilliant Minds Season 1.
Brilliant Minds, NBC’s new medical drama, features some brilliant actors. In addition to star Zachary Quinto, who plays a neurologist with unconventional methods for treating his patients and is based on the late, great Dr. Oliver Sacks, the series has a talented crop of guest stars, too. One of them is Mandy Patinkin, who joined the series for the two-part season finale in a genuinely shocking role.
Who does Mandy Patinkin play in Brilliant Minds?
Patinkin's guest star role was first announced months ago, with his unnamed character originally being described as a family doctor who joins the staff at Bronx General Hospital and becomes something of a mentor to Dr. Oliver Wolf (Quinto). Turns out that description was a bit of a red herring, as Episode 12, "The Doctor Whose World Collapsed," revealed that Patinkin is playing Wolf's father, Dr. Noah Wolf, who he'd previously thought was dead.
For more about Patinkin's role as Dr. Noah Wolf, check out our interview with series creator Michael Grassi.
Brilliant Minds Season 1 has been filled with exciting guest stars, including Steve Howey and André De Shields. De Shields, a famed actor of stage and screen who won a Tony for his role in Hadestown, plays a patient with Alzheimer’s in the series premiere. Howey, known for the Showtime series Shameless and NBC's Reba, plays a member of a biker gang who comes to Dr. Wolf for treatment.
Patinkin, though, just might be the most accomplished actor to appear in the series. Here’s everything you need to know about Patinkin, whose filmography spans decades and includes several notable film, TV, and stage roles.
Mandy Patinkin's Early Life
Patinkin was born on November 30, 1952, in Chicago, Illinois, to Doralee and Lester Don Patinkin. His family was descended from Jewish immigrants from Poland and Russia, and his father operated two large factories near Chicago. Patinkin would grow up and attend The University of Kansas and The Juilliard School.
Patinkin’s acting career got off to a great start when he appeared in a 1975 New York stage production of Trelawny of the 'Wells.’ His co-stars in the play included Meryl Streep and John Lithgow. He would go on to continue to act on the stage for the rest of the decade and beyond, and his film career began in earnest in the '80s (more on that below).
Mandy Patinkin's Wife & Family
Patinkin met his wife, Kathryn Grody, a few years after he made his stage debut when the two of them were in a 1978 production together. Grody, who was born in Los Angeles in 1946, is a playwrite and an actress as well. Some of her credits include the play Mom's Life, which she wrote and starred in, as well as a 2013 production of The Model Apartment. Her screen roles include The Big Fix, Harry and Walter Go to New York, and Reds.
As the pair recalled in an interview with Vulture, Patinkin told his future wife that he was going to marry her someday on their first date. Grody was initially hesitant because she said she "didn't believe in marriage," but she changed her mind when they had their first kiss. They got married in 1980, and will soon celebrate their 45th anniversary.
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In that Vuture interview, Patinkin sang his wife's praises by reciting the advice he gives to anybody who asks.
“Look, get a partner. I don’t care what your preference is, get a partner so you’re not alone," he began. "And if you’re really, really lucky, try to find one where you can’t explain what you feel. Because when the shit hits the fan — and it will — you need to remember that moment that you connected, and couldn’t explain what you felt. That’ll remind you to shut up long enough to calm down and continue."
Patinkin and Grody have two sons: Isaac, who was born in 1983, and Gideon, who was born in 1987.
The pair are active — and popular! — on social media, having been prompted to start a joint TikTok account during the COVID-19 pandemic after Gideon uploaded some footage of them. Both Patinkin and Grody are political activists who support Democrats.
Mandy Patinkin Movies
Patinkin’s film debut was a tiny role in a 1978 political thriller called The Big Fix, but by 1980, he’d started getting bigger roles, like Miloš Forman’s drama Ragtime. He would go on to appear in Sidney Lumet’s film Daniel and Barbra Streisand's Yentl in 1983, the latter of which earned him a Golden Globe nomination.
In 1987, Patinkin played what might be his most beloved role when he starred in The Princess Bride as the swordsman Inigo Montoya. His delivery of the line “My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die," became iconic. A few years ago, Patinkin explained that he was thinking of his own, recently deceased father when filming the movie.
"I went outside in this castle, and walked around, and I kept talking to my dad. And I said, ‘Dad, I’m gonna get this guy.’ From the minute I read the script, I knew," Patinkin responded to a fan on TikTok who was grieving their own father's death. "I’m gonna do this part, because in my mind, if I get this six-fingered guy, that means I killed the cancer that killed my dad and I’ll get to visit my dad.”
RELATED: Zachary Quinto Knows Brilliant Minds' Cases Will Make You Cry: "That's Good!"
Patinkin has continued to appear in movies for the past several decades despite his many, many TV credits (more on those shortly). His other roles include Dick Tracy, True Colors, Impromptu, Wonder, and Life Itself. He’s done voice acting work, too, having voiced roles in the English dubs of two Hayao Miyazaki movies, Castle in the Sky and The Wind Rises, as well as Smurfs: The Lost Village, in which he voiced Papa Smurf.
Mandy Patinkin's Prolific TV Career
Patinkin’s first major TV role was when he played Dr. Jeffrey Geiger, the lead character of the '90s medical drama Chicago Hope — something of a full-circle moment now that he's returning to medical dramas on Brilliant Minds. Patinkin played the brilliant but troubled surgeon for 60 episodes of the series and won an Emmy for the performance in 1995. Looking back in a Vulture profile, Patinkin said he had some initial trouble transitioning to TV after already having a prestigious movie career.
"During Chicago Hope, I never let directors talk to me because I was so spoiled. I started off with people like Milos Forman, Sidney Lumet, James Lapine, unbelievably gifted people. So there I was saying, 'Don't talk to me, I don't want your opinion,'" the actor told Vulture in 2012. "I behaved abominably. I don't care if my work was good or if I got an award for it. I'm not proud of how I was then, and it pained me."
Luckily for everybody involved, Patinkin soon became a television pro. His next major role was the Bryan Fuller series Dead Like Me, which aired for two seasons in the early ‘00s and starred Patinkin and Ellen Muth as workaday Grim Reapers.
Patinkin had another leading role in a procedural starting in 2005, as he played Jason Gideon in Criminal Minds, though he left the show after two seasons because he found the violent content his character dealt with week after week detrimental to his own mental health. He continued playing on-screen law enforcement in what would become his longest-running role beginning in 2011, playing the CIA division chief Saul Berenson in the Showtime series Homeland. He was nominated for an Emmy for the role four times, though he never won.
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More recently, he’s had leading roles in The Good Fight as Hal Wackner and in Hulu’s mystery series Death and Other Details, where he plays a detective.
Some of Patinkin’s one-off TV credits include The Simpsons, Boston Public, Law & Order, and The Larry Sanders Show, the last of which he earned an Outstanding Guest Actor in a Comedy Series Emmy nomination for.
Mandy Patinkin's Stage Work
Patinkin has been a consistent presence on Broadway even with his busy on-screen acting schedule. Following Trelawny of the 'Wells', he went on a Broadway hot streak starting with a production of Hamlet,
He won a Tony Award for his performance in the 1980 run of Evita, and he was nominated twice more for Sunday in the Park With George in 1984 and The Wild Party in 2000.
You can watch all episode of Brilliant Minds on Peacock.
