Michael Lerner, a veteran character actor whose dozens of film and television credits include small but memorable roles in “Barton Fink” and “Elf,” died on April 8 at a hospital in Burbank, CA. He was 81.

Mr. Lerner was a busy working actor, who started out with roles in theater productions and episodic television before embarking on a five-decade film career. His role as Jack Lipnick, a volatile movie studio mogul, in Joel and Ethan Coen’s darkly comic “Barton Fink” (1991) earned him an Oscar nomination for best supporting actor in 1992.

On TV, he appeared as Pierre Salinger in “The Missiles of October” about the Cuban missile crisis. Other television credits include “M*A*S*H,” “The Brady Bunch, “Hill Street Blues,” “Clueless,” “Ruby and Oswald,” and “X-Men.”

“I would love people to know that I am a chameleon,” Mr. Lerner told The New York Times in 1991. “That I can play anything.”