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Fred Dalton Thompson
Freddaltonthompson
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[]



Icon TBJ Law & Order: Trial by Jury

Main Cast: Kirk AcevedoAmy CarlsonScott CohenBebe NeuwirthJerry OrbachFred Dalton Thompson

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