This is a list of characters who appeared on Seinfeld . This list features only characters who appeared in main roles or multiple episodes; those that appeared in only one are not included here.
Character | Portrayed by | Seasons | ||||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | ||
Jerry Seinfeld | Himself | Main | ||||||||
George Louis Costanza | Jason Alexander | Main | ||||||||
Elaine Marie Benes | Julia Louis-Dreyfus | Main | ||||||||
Kessler / Cosmo Kramer | Michael Richards | Main |
Character | Portrayed by | Seasons | |||||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | |||
Newman | Wayne Knight | Voice [lower-alpha 1] | Recurring | ||||||||
Susan Ross | Heidi Swedberg | Recurring | Recurring | Guest | |||||||
Morty Seinfeld | Barney Martin | Guest [lower-alpha 2] | Guest | Recurring | Guest | Recurring | |||||
Helen Seinfeld | Liz Sheridan | Guest | Recurring | Guest | Recurring | ||||||
Frank Costanza | Jerry Stiller | Guest [lower-alpha 3] | Recurring | ||||||||
Estelle Costanza | Estelle Harris | Recurring | |||||||||
Uncle Leo | Len Lesser | Guest | Recurring | Guest | Recurring | Guest | |||||
J. Peterman | John O'Hurley | Guest | Recurring | ||||||||
George Steinbrenner | Larry David | Voice | Recurring [lower-alpha 4] |
Character | # of episodes | Actor/Actress | Character description |
---|---|---|---|
Ruthie Cohen | 101 | Ruth Cohen | A cashier at Monk's Café whom George once accused of stealing a $20 bill with lipstick drawn on the president. She is visible in the background as the cashier at Monk's in almost every episode that features the interior of the cafe as a setting from Season 4 onward. |
Newman | 48 | Wayne Knight | Fellow tenant in Jerry and Kramer's apartment building. A heavyset male U.S. postal worker and Jerry's nemesis. A catchphrase of Jerry's is that he greets him with a contemptuous disdainful "Hello, Newman" each time they meet. In "The Raincoats", Helen Seinfeld addresses Newman with the same tone. In "The Revenge", only Newman's voice is heard, which was originally voiced by Larry David and rerecorded for syndication. Newman often speaks in an exaggeratedly dramatic, Shakespearean way, and generally has a more advanced vocabulary than other characters. Newman is also noted for his poetry. His first name appears to be unknown by any of the characters, even his employer; in "The Package" his business card gives his name merely as "NEWMAN". A minor character calls him "Norman" in "The Bottle Deposit", but this was a mistake on the part of the actress/character, rather than any revelation of Newman's first name. Newman is petty, vindictive, prone to hysteria, and often depicted as a stereotypical evil genius, who is usually undermined in some way. Jerry's exasperation or epiphany involving Newman will cause him to clench his fist and mutter "Newman!" under his breath. Newman and Kramer are usually depicted as casual friends, and the two sometimes participate in various unsuccessful moneymaking schemes together. Newman has been shown to harbor unrequited romantic feelings for Elaine. |
Frank Costanza | 29 | John Randolph (first appearance), Jerry Stiller (starts in season 5) [1] | George's father. He was born in Tuscany. Very quick to anger. He was a traveling businessman who detests removing his shoes in other people's homes and wears his sneakers in the swimming pool. He is also a former cook in the Army and learned to speak Korean while serving in the Korean War. He invents the holiday Festivus as a reaction to the cultural commercialism of Christmas. |
Estelle Costanza | 29 | Estelle Harris | George's highly obnoxious and melodramatic mother. She constantly squabbles with Frank and George about their actions but is the closest thing to reason in the Costanza household. Enjoys playing Mahjong. George claims she has never laughed, ever. |
Susan Ross | 29 | Heidi Swedberg | Susan was George's on-off girlfriend and later fiancée. The daughter of wealthy parents, she worked for NBC before getting fired as a result of her relationship with George. She later partnered with a woman named Mona, but then returned to her relationship with George and got engaged to him. She dies from licking cheap, toxic wedding invitation envelopes George bought. George initially shows little remorse at her demise despite her devotion to him. |
Morty Seinfeld | 24 | Phil Bruns (first appearance), Barney Martin (later appearances) | Jerry's father. He has strong, if sometimes outdated, convictions about business and the way of the world. He spent some time as a politician in his Florida retirement community. During his working years, he sold raincoats with Harry Fleming and was the inventor of the "belt-less trench-coat". He hates Velcro because of "that tearing sound". He is extremely mindful of money, once calculating the interest and lost value of $50 that was owed several decades ago. He engages in frequent disputes with Jerry over money, refusing to let his son pay for anything in his presence, particularly restaurant checks. |
Helen Seinfeld | 24 | Liz Sheridan | Jerry's mother. Often needed to provide reason to Jerry's and Morty's eccentric lifestyle, though overprotective of Jerry and often refuses point-blank to do anything that would inconvenience him. She is the only secondary character to appear in all nine seasons. |
Jacopo "J." Peterman | 22 | John O'Hurley | Elaine's boss in the last three seasons and the fictitious founder of the real-life J. Peterman Company. Eccentric adventurer and world-traveler, he lived in Costa Rica as a child. Once fired Elaine on suspicion of opium addiction when she failed a drug test after consuming a poppy seed muffin, and again for her extreme dislike of the film The English Patient . O'Hurley has said that Peterman's distinctive manner of speaking was inspired by "'40s radio drama, combined with a bit of a bad Charles Kuralt." [2] |
George Steinbrenner | 16 | Larry David (voice), Mitch Mitchell (in "The Nap" and "The Millennium"), Lee Bear (other appearances) | George's boss. Depicted as a rambling, unpredictable, and hard-nosed owner of the New York Yankees whose face is never seen. |
Uncle Leo | 15 | Len Lesser | Jerry's uncle. Brother of Helen Seinfeld. Somewhat cranky. Has a son, Jeffrey, who works in the NYC Parks Department, whom he mentions at every opportunity. He is very keen on Jerry stopping to say "hello". Often when something doesn't go the way he wants it to, he attributes it to anti-Semitism. He was once convicted of an unspecified "crime of passion". |
Matt Wilhelm | 12 | Richard Herd | George's supervisor at the New York Yankees. Briefly abducted by a carpet-cleaning cult (by the name of S-men), Wilhelm later leaves the Yankees to become a head scout for the New York Mets. He appears to suffer from symptoms of Alzheimer's disease. |
David Puddy | 11 | Patrick Warburton | Elaine's on-again-off-again boyfriend, often referred to and addressed as Puddy. Unflappable and calm, yet can be a surprisingly passionate individual at times (usually as a result of something Elaine has said). Appears to be an airhead and frequently stares into space. Puddy loves eating at Arby's. He perpetually squints. Used to be an auto mechanic (considered by Jerry as the only honest mechanic in New York), but later became a car salesman. A recovering mysophobe, born again Christian, and a face-painting New Jersey Devils fan. His trademark line, delivered in a monotone, is "Yeah, that's right." |
Mr. Lippman | 11 | Richard Fancy, Harris Shore (in "The Library") | Elaine's boss at Pendant Publishing and a temporary boss of George in "The Red Dot". Later, he opens a bakery named "Top of the muffin to you!" that sells only the tops of muffins, stealing the idea from Elaine. Enjoys cigars and botches a big merger with a Japanese company due to a nasty cold and no handkerchief to sneeze into. He declines to shake hands with the Japanese representative because of this and ruins the merger, causing Pendant Publishing to go bankrupt. |
Justin Pitt | 8 | Ian Abercrombie | Elaine's second boss. Extremely wealthy business owner. He is a very picky individual and nearly impossible to please. Eats his Snickers bars with a knife and fork and requires that his white knee socks fit him perfectly and never fall down. Fired Elaine after he became convinced she had tried to murder him using a deadly drug interaction, using Jerry as an accomplice. |
Mickey Abbott | 7 | Danny Woodburn | A quick-tempered little person actor. Typically appears with Kramer, with whom he is friends. He becomes angry if referred to as a "midget". Often appears in roles as children or elves (with Kramer at a department store). In "The Race", Mickey states that he has two children in college. In "The Yada Yada", Kramer states that he has been married three times, and he marries for a fourth time at the end of the episode. |
Russell Dalrymple | 7 | Bob Balaban | The president of NBC who works with Jerry and George on a television pilot. Became angry when he caught George (at Jerry's behest) ogling his large-breasted teenage daughter after a meeting and called off the deal, though it was later resurrected. He becomes obsessed with Elaine and quits NBC to join Greenpeace in order to impress her. He falls off a small dinghy while chasing a whaling ship and he disappears and perishes at sea. |
Kenny Bania | 7 | Steve Hytner | Stand-up comedian considered a 'hack' by Jerry and other comedians. Jerry especially dislikes him because he uses Jerry's act to warm up his audience. Though his profession plays no role in his first appearance, "The Soup", Jerry Seinfeld felt it was important to the character, since Bania's indomitable self-confidence is characteristic of a certain type of club comedian. [3] Ovaltine is a main topic of his acts (Jerry: "He thinks anything that dissolves in milk is funny"). He has curious views on food and is obsessed with eating dinner at Mendy's Restaurant. |
Crazy Joe Davola | 6 | Peter Crombie | Writer who suffers from mental problems. Attacked Kramer, blames Jerry for misfortunes, dated and stalked Elaine, going as far as taking photographs of her around town and even in her apartment with a telephoto lens. Depressed that Elaine rejected him, he dressed up as the clown from the opera Pagliacci and beats up several street toughs who antagonize him. He likes to leave his door open to "encourage intruders". Attacked Jerry at the filming of the Jerry Pilot and was never heard from again. |
Dugan | 6 | Joe Urla | Co-worker of Elaine at J. Peterman. Thinks that no one should make fun of pigs. |
Jackie Chiles | 6 | Phil Morris | Kramer's eccentric but highly effective lawyer. Although very successful, he has had bad luck when representing Kramer. Favorite sayings are "Outrageous! Egregious! Preposterous!" Parody of Johnnie Cochran. After the group is convicted in the finale, Jackie confirms that Sidra, Jerry's ex-girlfriend, has breasts that are not only real, but "spectacular". |
Larry | 6 | Lawrence Mandley | The manager or owner of Monk's Cafe, sometimes antagonized by the foursome's antics. Implied to be gay[ citation needed ]. Occasionally brandishes a gold earring. |
Jack Klompus | 6 | Sandy Baron | Short-tempered resident of Phase Two of the Pines of Mar Gables who seems to consistently bear a grudge against Morty Seinfeld. Owns a fancy astronaut pen that he gives to Jerry under duress in "The Pen". Transitions from vice president to president of the condo association after making false allegations of Morty stealing from the treasury to buy a Cadillac in "The Cadillac". (Jerry bought the Cadillac for Morty, but the condo board members viewed this expense as implausible due to their dislike of Jerry's act.) After being initially unable to convince a majority of the board to impeach Morty, he calls the swing vote an "old bag", prompting her to remember Jerry stole her marble rye and change her vote. Morty is then impeached near-unanimously. Later gets a "sweetheart deal" from Jerry for Morty's Cadillac, then subsequently drives it into a swamp and loses the aforementioned pen. |
Tim Whatley | 5 | Bryan Cranston | A dentist that was once dubbed "Dentist to the Stars" by George. In "The Yada Yada", he converts to Judaism, according to Jerry "just for the jokes". Jerry's anger at Whatley causes Kramer to call him an "anti-dentite". His giving Jerry a label maker he received from Elaine in the episode "The Label Maker" leads to the term "regifting". In "The Jimmy", Whatley irks Jerry by having Penthouse magazines in his waiting room and by possibly "violating" him while he was unconscious during a tooth filling. Also appears in the episodes "The Mom & Pop Store" and "The Strike". |
Mr. and Mrs. Ross | 5 | Warren Frost and Grace Zabriskie | Parents of Susan, George's fiancée. After Kramer burned down the family's cabin, it was revealed that Mr. Ross had had a homosexual affair with author John Cheever in "The Cheever Letters". Mrs. Ross is an alcoholic who disdains yet tolerates her husband. In the episode "The Wizard", the couple confirms George's longstanding suspicion that they never liked him, and blamed him for Susan's death. In the finale, they became angry when Dr. Wexler mentions the look on George's face upon hearing the news of Susan's death. Mr. Ross is seen buying a gun after learning George was happy after Susan's death. |
Elaine Marie Benes is a fictional character on the American television sitcom Seinfeld, played by Julia Louis-Dreyfus. Elaine's best friend in the sitcom is her ex-boyfriend Jerry Seinfeld, and she is also good friends with George Costanza and Cosmo Kramer. Louis-Dreyfus received critical acclaim for her performance as Elaine, winning an Emmy, a Golden Globe and five SAG Awards. She reprised the role during season 41 of Saturday Night Live in 2016.
Cosmo Kramer, usually referred to simply by his surname, is a fictional character in the American television sitcom Seinfeld (1989–1998) played by Michael Richards.
Jerome "Jerry" Seinfeld is the title character and the main protagonist of the American television sitcom Seinfeld (1989–1998). The straight man among his group of friends, this semi-fictionalized version of comedian Jerry Seinfeld was named after, co-created by, and played by Seinfeld himself. The series revolves around Jerry's misadventures with his best friend George Costanza, neighbor Cosmo Kramer, and ex-girlfriend Elaine Benes. He is usually the voice of reason amid his friends' antics and the focal point of the relationship.
"The Raincoats" is a two-part episode of the American sitcom Seinfeld. It is the 82nd and 83rd episode of the show, and the 18th and 19th episodes of the fifth season. The episode was first shown on NBC on April 28, 1994, and garnered an Emmy nomination for Outstanding Guest Actor in a Comedy Series for Judge Reinhold.
"The Engagement" is the first episode of the seventh-season and the 111th overall episode of the NBC sitcom Seinfeld. The episode broke with the standalone story format of earlier seasons, making a major change in the series status quo by having regular cast member George Costanza become engaged to Susan Ross. Susan was a recurring character during season 4 of the series but had not been seen since. The episode aired on September 21, 1995.
"The Slicer" is the 163rd episode of the NBC sitcom Seinfeld. This was the seventh episode of the ninth and final season. It first aired on November 13, 1997. In this episode, George gets a job with an incompetent industrial firm, but an old photo of his boss with him in the background and Jerry's feuding with his dermatologist girlfriend put George at risk of getting fired, while Kramer's fondness for having his own meat slicer proves to be a source of help.
"The Ex-Girlfriend" is the first episode of the sitcom Seinfeld's second season and the show's sixth episode overall. The episode was first broadcast on NBC in the United States on January 23, 1991, after being postponed for one week due to the start of the First Gulf War. During the course of the show, George Costanza breaks up with his girlfriend Marlene and leaves some books in her apartment. He persuades his friend Jerry to retrieve them. Jerry starts dating Marlene, who annoys him as much as she did George, but he finds himself unable to break up with her because she has a "psycho-sexual" hold on him.
"The Apartment" is the fifth episode of the second season of the American sitcom Seinfeld and the show's tenth episode overall. In the episode, protagonist Jerry Seinfeld gets his ex-girlfriend Elaine Benes an apartment above his, but regrets this after realizing it might be uncomfortable living so close together. Meanwhile, Jerry's friend George Costanza wears a wedding ring to a party to see what effect it will have on women.
"The Pilot" is the two-part season finale of the fourth season of the American sitcom Seinfeld. It is the 23rd and 24th episode of the fourth season and the 63rd and 64th episode overall. It was written by series co-creator Larry David and directed by Tom Cherones, and originally aired on NBC on May 20, 1993.
"The Fusilli Jerry" is the 107th episode of the NBC sitcom Seinfeld. Featuring the introduction of David Puddy, the episode also features Kramer receiving vanity plates that say "ASSMAN" as well as marital problems between George's parents. This is the 21st episode of the sixth season. It aired on April 27, 1995.
"The Serenity Now" is the 159th episode of the American sitcom Seinfeld. This was the third episode of the ninth and final season. It aired on NBC in the United States on October 9, 1997. In this episode, George competes with his childhood rival Lloyd Braun at selling computers for his father Frank, and Elaine finds herself being hit on by every Jewish male she knows, including Jerry, who is experiencing emotions for the first time.
"The Merv Griffin Show" is the 162nd episode of the NBC sitcom Seinfeld. This was the sixth episode of the ninth and final season. It aired on November 6, 1997, and appeared on DVD ten years later. In this episode, Kramer finds the original set for The Merv Griffin Show and uses it to revive the show in his apartment, Elaine contends with a new co-worker who stealthily sidles behind her, and Jerry drugs his girlfriend so that he can play with her collection of toys.
"The Strike" is the 166th episode of the NBC sitcom Seinfeld. This was the tenth episode of the ninth and final season. It aired on December 18, 1997. This episode features and popularized the holiday of Festivus.
"The Burning" is the sixteenth episode of the ninth and final season of the NBC sitcom Seinfeld, and the 172nd episode overall. This episode first aired on March 19, 1998. It was written by Jennifer Crittenden and directed by Andy Ackerman.
"The Finale" is the series finale of the American television sitcom Seinfeld. It is the 23rd and 24th episode of the ninth season, and the 179th and the 180th episode overall. The episode, written by series co-creator Larry David and directed by Andy Ackerman, originally aired on NBC on May 14, 1998, to an audience of 76 million viewers, making it so the fourth-most watched overall television series finale. In the preceding hour, a clip show called "The Chronicle" aired. The initial running time for the finale was 1 hour and 15 minutes.
"The Switch" is the 97th episode of the NBC sitcom Seinfeld, and the 11th episode of the show's sixth season. It aired on January 5, 1995. In this episode, Jerry wants to switch from dating a non-laughing woman to dating her roommate, Elaine has difficulty retrieving a tennis racket she loaned out, and George enlists Kramer's mother to spy on his seemingly bulimic girlfriend, leading to him learning Kramer's first name.
"The Diplomat's Club" is the 108th episode of the NBC sitcom Seinfeld. This is the 22nd episode for the sixth season. It aired on May 4, 1995. The episode was the final appearance of Mr. Pitt as a recurring character, as he comes to suspect Elaine of plotting to kill him in order to receive the benefits from his will. In the episode's other plotlines, Jerry takes an ill-fated trip to Ithaca with an overly pampering assistant, Kramer returns to his gambling habit by betting on flight arrivals, and George tries to prove he is not racist by getting a black friend.
"The Soup Nazi" is the 116th episode of the NBC sitcom Seinfeld, which was the sixth episode of the seventh season. It first aired in the United States on November 2, 1995.
"The Shower Head" is the 126th episode of the NBC sitcom Seinfeld. This is the sixteenth episode for the seventh season. It aired on February 15, 1996. It had 32.3 million US viewers. This episode focuses on Jerry and George's struggles to get their respective parents to move out of New York. Meanwhile, the tenants of Jerry's apartment building are made miserable by the new low-flow showerheads, and Elaine takes a drug test for work which comes back positive for opium.
"The Maid" is the 175th episode of the NBC sitcom Seinfeld. This was the 19th episode of the ninth and final season. It aired on April 30, 1998. In this episode, Jerry hires a maid and ends up having a sexual relationship with her, George tries to get people to give him a good nickname, and Elaine falls into a chain of phone problems after Kramer subscribes her phone number to an incessant fax service.