Known for playing streetwise, savvy and ballsy characters, Robert Pastorelli was an accomplished film, TV and stage actor perhaps best known for the role of house painter Eldin on Murphy Brown.



Pastorelli was a former boxer, which added to the tough-guy persona of many of his characters. His break-out film role came in 1990 when he appeared in Dances With Wolves, and he also could be seen in Eraser, Michael, and Be Cool.



Pastorelli is perhaps most famous and most widely remembered for his seven seasons on Murphy Brown as Eldin, the house painter who was always ready to lend an ear and advice to Candace Bergen. The role earned Pastorelli a 1995 Emmy nomination, and paved the way for him to star in his own short-lived sitcom, Double Rush. Pastorelli got to return to his theatre roots later in his career. He appeared alongside Glenn Close in the made-for-TV adaptation of South Pacific and co-starred with her in London onstage in A Streetcar Named Desire. In 1998, he starred in the US version of the British crime drama Cracker, assuming the role created by Robert Coltrane.



Sadly, drug use dogged Pastorelli throughout his life, and he died of a heroin overdose on March 8, 2004.