Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
The Schmooze

Justice for Seymour! The internet demands Rick Moranis’ attacker be found

Actor Rick Moranis was the victim of a violent, apparently random attack Thursday morning on the Upper West Side of Manhattan.

Video obtained by ABC-7 shows the 67-year-old actor being punched in the head and knocked to the ground by a man in a black “I (heart) NY” sweatshirt on West 70th Street near Central Park West.

The Canadian-born Jewish actor entered de facto retirement in the 1990s, following the death of his wife, to focus on raising their children. A kindly, nebbishy presence on screen — whether shrinking his progeny in “Honey, I Shrunk the Kids” or tending a homicidal alien plant in “Little Shop of Horrors” — he is widely beloved. Last month he made a rare return to acting as part of a Mint Mobile commercial with actor Ryan Reynolds.

Moranis was said to have hurt his head, back and hip during the assault, but was able to seek treatment at a nearby hospital. He later reported the incident to police at the local precinct.

We’re glad Moranis appears to be recovering well, and are relieved in these divided times we can all agree on one thing — bringing the assailant to justice.

PJ Grisar is the Forward’s culture reporter. He can be reached at grisar@forward.com

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.

If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.

Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism. 

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at editorial@forward.com, subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.

Exit mobile version