Armin Shimerman

From LOSCON.org:

Armin Shimerman has dabbled in diverse arenas. Most Science Fiction fans are familiar with his portrayals of Quark on Star Trek: DS-9 and Principal Snyder on Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

In over sixty different guest star characters on Television, he has brought to life an assortment of judges, anal-retentive bureaucrats, and sweet lost souls, including the major recurring roles of Pascal in Beauty and the Beast, Cousin Bernie in Brooklyn Bridge, Tommy Walker on the Invisible Man, and Edmund Graves on David E. Kelley’s, "Girl’s Club."

Immediately after graduation from UCLA with a degree in English, he apprenticed at the prestigious San Diego Old Globe Shakespeare Theater and eventually took over the lead comic roles. Afterward, he emigrated to New York where within a year he was performing for Joseph Papp in the highly acclaimed production of "3 Penny Opera." He went on to work many years on Broadway in "St. Joan" with Lynn Redgrave at the Circle in the Square, "Broadway" with Teri Garr and Glen Close, and finally Richard Rogers’ last musical "I Remember Mama." Years of work in Regional Theater followed including Stage West, Connecticut Shakespeare Festival, Vermont Champlain Shakespeare Festival, Indiana Repertory, Rutgers’ Mason Gross Theater, Los Angeles Mark Taper Forum, Los Angeles Theatre Center, Tyrone Guthrie Theater, and Seattle’s ACT. For his last stage endeavor in Pinter's "Birthday Party," he was nominated for best lead performance by the prestigious Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle.

In addition, he has co-wrote Sci-Fi novels for Pocket Books: "The 34th Rule", "The Merchant Prince," "Outrageous Fortune," and "A Capital Offense" (due out later this year). He is currently penning a Tudor mystery, "The Toad-eater." This latest book is a product of years of teaching Elizabethan Rhetoric to classical actors.

He was a founding member of "Alien Voices," a sci-fi audio theatre group with John DeLancie and Leonard Nimoy which does recordings of classic sci-fi.

Recently, he completed six years of service as a National officer of SAG where among other things he negotiated the current TV/Film contract, the Talent Agency contract, and the current consolidation and merger document.

Facts and pictures are courtesy of Armin Shimmerman.

From StarTrek.com:

Armin Shimerman played Quark, the Ferengi bartender who ran all the entertainment concessions on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine including the bar, restaurant, gambling house and holosuites. A delightful blend of charm, wiliness, and entrepreneurial greed, the character of Quark (along with Q) held the distinction of having appeared on all three of the latter Star Trek series — Star Trek: The Next Generation, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, and Star Trek: Voyager. "Quark's passions are gold and 'hew-man' (Ferengi word for human) women... not always in that order," says Shimerman.

Born of immigrant parents and raised in a small farming town in New Jersey, Shimerman's family moved to Los Angeles when he was 16 years old. In an effort to help her son meet new people, his mother enrolled him in a drama group and (as the saying goes) the rest is history. Upon graduation from the University of California at Los Angeles, he was chosen as one of eight apprentices out of 900 for the prestigious Old Globe Theater in San Diego. Shimerman appeared prominently in many regional theater productions for the Tyrone Guthrie Theatre, the Mark Taper Forum, the American Shakespeare Festival, the New York Shakespeare Festival, and the Indiana Repertory Theater. Following a move to New York, he landed roles in the Broadway production of Richard Rodger's last musical, "I Remember Mama," "Broadway" with Chris Sarandon and Teri Garr, "St. Joan" with Lynn Redgrave and Joe Papp's production of "Three Penny Opera" with Raul Julia.

Shimerman then returned to his adopted hometown of Los Angeles and his success continued as he appeared in recurring roles in two CBS series. He portrayed Pascal in Beauty & The Beast, and Cousin Bernard in Brooklyn Bridge. He has also guest starred over 65 times on such television series as L.A. Law, Married: With Children, Civil Wars and Seinfeld. Perhaps the most memorable of Shimerman's guest appearances was in Star Trek: The Next Generation when he made his debut as the uncredited Wedding Box in the first season episode entitled "Haven." Later that season, Armin returned to the set of Star Trek: The Next Generation where he portrayed Letek, the first Ferengi in a Star Trek series, in the episode "The Last Outpost."

During the third season hiatus of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Shimerman worked on the film An Eye for an Eye with Sally Field and Ed Harris. He has also co-starred with Andrew McCarthy, Patsy Kensit and Star Trek: The Next Generation alumna Denise Crosby in the feature film Dream Man, in which he portrays District Attorney Van Horne.

Shimerman can currently be seen in the recurring roles of Judge Moskin on ABC-TV's The Practice and the pernicious Principal Snyder on WB's Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

Teaching his unique Shakespearean acting approach to students throughout Los Angeles keeps Shimerman busy in his spare time. He has taught at the High School of the Performing Arts, the Theatricum Botanicum, the Tyrone Guthrie Theatre, the College of Idaho and several workshop companies, as well as his alma mater, UCLA. He has also spent time as a scribe, writing "The Merchant Prince," as well as two Star Trek novels, "Wheels within Wheels" and "The 34th Rule." Shimerman is active as a National Board Member of the Screen Actors Guild.