Peter Van Norden

Peter Edward Van Norden (December 16, 1950 to July 9, 2026) was an American actor whose face and timing were familiar to film and television audiences, and whose craft was revered on Los Angeles and regional stages. Millions knew him as the slovenly, scene-stealing Officer Vinnie Schtulman in Police Academy 2: Their First Assignment (1985), as farmer Ralph Brentner in the 1994 Stephen King miniseries The Stand, and as White House chief of staff John H. Sununu in The Naked Gun 2 1/2: The Smell of Fear (1991). Theatre critics knew a different Van Norden: a Meisner-trained classical actor who won an Ovation Award for Harold Pinter, played Prospero and Scrooge, stood by for Tom Hanks as Falstaff, and kept working on stage into 2025.

Born in New York City on December 16, 1950, Van Norden graduated magna cum laude from Colgate University before training at the Neighborhood Playhouse with Sanford Meisner, Richard Boone, William Esper, and others. Early Off-Broadway seasons at Classic Stage Company (Measure for Measure, Tartuffe, The Hound of the Baskervilles) led to Broadway credits at Circle in the Square and Lincoln Center, including Romeo and Juliet, Saint Joan with Lynn Redgrave, The Inspector General, Macbeth at the Vivian Beaumont, and the musical Little Johnny Jones. He also appeared in Public Theater and New York Shakespeare Festival productions of Hamlet, working alongside Sam Waterston and later Kevin Kline, and watched Meryl Streep rehearse in Joe Papp's circle, lessons he later credited with shaping his standards.

He moved to Los Angeles in the late 1970s and made his screen debut in Lloyd Kaufman's Squeeze Play! (1979), followed by Troma's Waitress! and other early comedies. Police Academy 2 made him a cult favorite as Vinnie Schtulman, partnered with Steve Guttenberg's Carey Mahoney and remembered for lamp-store chaos and diet jokes. Serious drama arrived with Jonathan Kaplan's The Accused (1988), in which he played attorney Paulsen opposite Jodie Foster and Kelly McGillis. Comedy franchises called again for Naked Gun 2 1/2. On television he guested across Cheers, St. Elsewhere, T.J. Hooker, Family Ties, Hill Street Blues, Newhart, Matlock, L.A. Law, Murder, She Wrote, Tales from the Crypt, Nash Bridges, Family Matters, ER, Days of Our Lives, Without a Trace, and 9-1-1, while The Stand gave him a sustained heroic turn as Ralph Brentner.

Even at the height of screen work, Van Norden treated the stage as home. He collected Drama-Logue and Garland awards, earned a Bay Area Drama Critics Circle Best Actor prize for Major Barbara at San Jose Repertory, and in 2018 won the Ovation Award for Best Actor in a Drama as Roote in Pinter's The Hothouse at Antaeus Theatre Company. He was the first American actor cast as the title monarch in Mike Bartlett's King Charles III (Arizona Theatre Company, 2016), played Edna Turnblad in Hairspray and Don Quixote in San Diego, returned repeatedly as Scrooge at Rubicon Theatre, and in 2018 stood by for Tom Hanks as Falstaff in Henry IV at the Shakespeare Center of Los Angeles, performing the role when needed. Late credits included Red Ink (2020 Ovation nominee), Prospero in The Tempest at Antaeus (2023), Misalliance at A Noise Within (2024), and Corktown '39 at Matrix Theatre (2025).

Van Norden married Wendy Edith Van Norden; they had a son, Robert (Rob), a film producer. Colleagues remembered kindness as readily as technique. Stage Raw editor Steven Leigh Morris, who cast him in Red Ink, called him one of L.A.'s most assured Shakespearean actors and praised the mix of Shakespearean training and franchise clowning that powered his comic gravity. In a 2018 Working Actor's Journey interview he urged peers to be supportive and to make the room joyful. He died peacefully on July 9, 2026, in a Southern California hospice with Wendy at his side, after multiple health conditions. He was 75. Robert announced the news on his father's Instagram, calling him a terrific father, husband, friend, and a greatly respected member of the theater community.