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Cliff Osmond (born Clifford O. Ebrahim on February 26, 1937) is an American character actor and television screenwriter best known for appearing in films directed by Billy Wilder. A parallel career as an acting teacher coincided with his other activities. Osmond was born in Jersey City's Margaret Hague Medical Center, raised in Union City, N.J. A graduate of Thomas A. Edison grammar school, Emerson High School, and Dartmouth College (BA in English), he received his Masters Degree in Business Administration from UCLA, and advanced to candidacy for the Ph.D. in Theater History at UCLA. He... MORE

Cliff Osmond (born Clifford O. Ebrahim on February 26, 1937) is an American character actor and television screenwriter best known for appearing in films directed by Billy Wilder. A parallel career as an acting teacher coincided with his other activities. Osmond was born in Jersey City's Margaret Hague Medical Center, raised in Union City, N.J. A graduate of Thomas A. Edison grammar school, Emerson High School, and Dartmouth College (BA in English), he received his Masters Degree in Business Administration from UCLA, and advanced to candidacy for the Ph.D. in Theater History at UCLA. He appeared in four of Billy Wilder's comedies, beginning with Irma la Douce (1963) as the police sergeant. He played the songwriter Barney Millsap in Billy Wilder's Kiss Me, Stupid (1964), which used new comedic song lyrics by Ira Gershwin set to unused tunes composed by his brother George. Osmond also appeared in two later Wilder films a co-starring role as Purkey opposite Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau in The Fortune Cookie (1966), and The Front Page (1974). Osmond made more than 100 appearances in TV shows or movies between 1962 and 1996. During that period he he guest-starred in at least half a LESS