Fred Dalton Thompson | ||
---|---|---|
Character Arthur Branch | ||
Date of birth August 19, 1942 | ||
Place of birth Sheffield, Alabama | ||
Date of death November 1, 2015 | ||
Place of death Nashville, Tennessee | ||
IMDb profile |
Fred Dalton Thompson was an actor who played District Attorney Arthur Branch on Law & Order, Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, Law & Order: Criminal Intent and Law & Order: Trial By Jury. He was a regular cast member on Law & Order for five seasons. He first appeared in the Season 13 episode "American Jihad", and made his last appearance in the Season 17 episode "The Family Hour". Thompson was also a regular cast member on Law & Order: Trial by Jury.
He appeared in eleven different episodes of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit. He first appeared in the Season 4 episode "Fallacy", and made his last appearance in the Season 7 episode "Gone". He also appeared in the episode "In the Wee Small Hours (2)" from Law & Order: Criminal Intent.
Thompson appeared as D.A. Arthur Branch in the pilot episode of Conviction.
He died on November 1, 2015, after a battle with lymphoma at the age of 73.[1]
Trivia[]
- He is the only actor to be a regular on two different Law & Order series at the same time. From March to May 2005, he played DA Arthur Branch on both Law & Order (1990) and Law & Order: Trial by Jury.
- Thompson's character Branch is one of only five characters who have appeared in all of the first four series in the Law & Order franchise. The other four are Ed Green (Jesse L. Martin), Elizabeth Rodgers (Leslie Hendrix), Lennie Briscoe (Jerry Orbach), and Elizabeth Olivet (Carolyn McCormick).
- Along with Chris Noth, Dann Florek, Alana De La Garza, and Jerry Orbach, he is one of five Law & Order cast members who later joined the regular cast of one of the spin-off series, although as noted above, he was on two shows at the same time.
- Fred Thompson represented Tennessee as a US Senator from 1994 to 2003. He was also a candidate for the Republican nomination for President of the United States in 2008.
- Thompson was an attorney in real life, having received his law degree from the Vanderbilt Law School in 1967.
Footnotes[]
Law & Order | |
Current Cast: Mehcad Brooks • Reid Scott • Maura Tierney Current Cast: Hugh Dancy • Tony Goldwyn • Odelya Halevi |
Law & Order: Trial by Jury | |
Main Cast: Kirk Acevedo • Amy Carlson • Scott Cohen • Bebe Neuwirth • Jerry Orbach • Fred Dalton Thompson |