Who

Waterston, he of the full-figured eyebrows and homespun charm, is a longtime theater and film actor who has spent more than a decade on Law & Order.

Backstory

The Yale grad took his acting career seriously from the start: He studied the craft at the Sorbonne and the American Actors Workshop before appearing in the 1967 romp Fitzwilly starring Dick Van Dyke. Waterston eventually moved to larger roles in films like 1974's The Great Gatsby and the 1984 drama The Killing Fields, for which he earned an Oscar nomination. A longtime favorite of Woody Allen, Waterston appeared in Interiors, Hannah and Her Sisters, and Crimes and Misdemeanors in the 1980s, but only earned widespread fame by joining the cast of Law & Order as ADA Jack McCoy in 1994, after Dick Wolf dumped his predecessor, the notoriously nutty Michael Moriarty.

Of note

Waterston has clocked some 14 years as Jack McCoy, which makes him the second longest-running cast member on the show behind S. Epatha Merkerson. (Over the course of his lengthy stint, Waterson's appeared alongside Chris Noth, Benjamin Bratt, the late Jerry Orbach, Jesse L. Martin, Angie Harmon, and Dianne Wiest, among many others.) Having put in so many years as an ADA, McCoy finally got the promotion he long deserved—Waterston's character is now district attorney, replacing Fred Thompson, who left the show in 2007 to pursue an ill-fated bid for the presidency.

Shill

Waterston can be seen in commercials for the investment bank TD Ameritrade; funnily enough, when the bank was named TD Waterhouse, the pitch man was former Law & Order cast mate Steven Hill. You can also hear Waterston's voice on TV commercials for The Nation.

Campaign trail

A political independent, Waterston signed on as spokesperson for Unity08, a "third force political movement," and has been making appearances on TV and radio chat shows to discuss third-party presidential politics.

Personal

Waterston met his second wife, Lynn, on a blind date in 1972. They live in West Cornwall, Conn. and have four children: James, Elisabeth, Katherine and Graham. All of Waterson's offspring are involved in showbiz. Both Jamie and Elisabeth have had bit parts on Law & Order, and recently Waterston acted alongside Elisabeth in Much Ado About Nothing at the Delacorte Theater.

No joke

In 1995, Waterston starred in a cult-hit fake commercial for Saturday Night Live, in which he was the spokesman for "Old Glory Insurance," a company selling protection against possible robot attacks.