Ed Lauter (born October 30, 1940) is the actor who played Lieutenant Commander Albert in the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "The First Duty". Outside of Star Trek, he has appeared in numerous film and television projects, the majority of which feature other Star Trek actors.
Lauter began as a comedian before moving on to become a film and television actor in 1971. He made his feature film debut in the 1972 sequel The Magnificent Seven Ride!, co-starring fellow Star Trek alumnus William Lucking and James B. Sikking. Lauter and Sikking also appeared in The New Centurions that same year.
Perhaps Lauter's best known role is Captain Knauer in the original 1974 blockbuster The Longest Yard. He and star Burt Reynolds were the only two actors from the original film to reappear in the 2005 remake, albeit in different roles. The remake version also starred veteran Trek actor James Cromwell. Other films Lauter appeared in throughout the 1970s include Breakheart Pass (with Jill Ireland), the 1976 remake of King Kong (with Rene Auberjonois), Magic (with David Ogden Stiers), and Alfred Hitchcock's last film, Family Plot (1976). He also had a role in the 1978 mini-series How the West Was Won. William Shatner, Fionnula Flanagan, William Boyett, Robert Doqui, Brian Keith, Ricardo Montalban, George D. Wallace, Morgan Woodward, and Harris Yulin were also involved with this series. Lauter was also part of the mini-series Greatest Heroes of the Bible, as were Ted Cassidy, Jeff Corey, Frank Gorshin, Nehemiah Persoff, John Schuck, and Dean Stockwell.
In 1980, Lauter co-starred with LeVar Burton, Brad Dourif, Meg Foster, and Madge Sinclair in the made-for-TV movie Guyana Tragedy: The Story of Jim Jones. His many other movie credits throughout the 1980s include Cujo (with Daniel Hugh Kelly), Death Wish 3 (with Marina Sirtis and Gavan O'Herlihy), Girls Just Want to Have Fun (with Biff Yeager), Real Genius (with Jeanne Mori, Peter Parros, Louis Giambalvo, and Randy Lowell), the TV remake of The Defiant Ones (with Wil Wheaton), Youngblood (with Fionnula Flanagan), Class 89 (with Rene Auberjonois), Revenge of the Nerds II: Nerds in Paradise (with James Cromwell, Tom Hodges, and Raymond Forchion), Fat Man and Little Boy (starring Dwight Schultz), and Born on the Fourth of July (with Bob Gunton, Richard Poe, and Mike Starr).
In 1991, Lauter starred in The Rocketeer along with Paul Sorvino, Terry O'Quinn, Tiny Ron, Max Grodénchik, Clint Howard, and William Boyett. In 1993, Lauter made an uncredited appearance in the crime thriller True Romance, featuring Saul Rubinek and stars Christian Slater. And in 1994, he co-starred with Star Trek: Voyager actors Robert Picardo, Ethan Phillips, and Charles Rocket in the western comedy Wagons East.
Other movies in which Lauter appeared include TV's The Tuskegee Airmen (1995, with Christopher McDonald, Daniel Hugh Kelly, Tim Kelleher, and Janet MacLachlan), Digital Man (1995, with Chase Masterson and Clint Howard), Leaving Las Vegas (1995, with Steven Weber and Thomas Kopache), Mulholland Falls (1996, with Louise Fletcher), TV's Married to a Stranger (1997, also with Louise Fletcher), TV's A Bright Shining Lie (with Kurtwood Smith and Richard Libertini), and TV's Python (2000, starring Wil Wheaton).
Lauter was one of many Star Trek alumni to appear in the 2000 drama Thirteen Days. Also starring in this film were Steven Culp, Kevin Conway, Tim Kelleher, Bill Smitrovich, Boris Lee Krutonog, Michael Fairman, Jack Blessing, and Peter White. The following year, he and Michael Ensign appeared in the 2001 comedy Not Another Teen Movie. In 2003, Lauter appeared in the Oscar-nominated drama Seabiscuit, also with Michael Ensign as well as Michael Buchman Silver.
Besides The Next Generation, Lauter has also made guest appearances on several popular TV series, most notably a recurring role as Fire Captain Dannaker on ER. He also appeared in the two-hour pilot episode for Hardcastle and McCormick, starring fellow Trek alumnus Brian Keith and Daniel Hugh Kelly.