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Her clients at The Characters agency in Toronto over 35 years included Mena Massoud of Disney’s ‘Aladdin’ fame.
By Etan Vlessing
Canada Bureau Chief
Ronda Cooper, who had a long career as a Canadian talent agent, including at The Characters Talent Agency for 35 years, has died. She was 77.
Cooper passed away on Jan. 1 in Toronto after a year-long battle with dementia, Characters agency president Jennifer Goldhar Gossack told The Hollywood Reporter.
Born May 1, 1947 in Toronto, Cooper first aspired to become an actress and studied at York University and then at a drama school in London, England. She returned to Toronto in 1979 and found work as a talent agent at the Penny Noble Talent Agency in her hometown and New York City. In 1986, the Characters agency founder Larry Goldhar was looking for a new agent and client and stage and TV actor Jonathan Welsh recommended Cooper.
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On ringing her, Goldhar discovered Cooper had just moved back to Toronto from New York City. The two met together over lunch and a week later Cooper joined Characters.
Jennifer Goldhar, in a speech read during Cooper’s funeral service on Jan. 3, recalled working first as an assistant to the veteran agent, and then as an agent alongside Cooper.
“As her assistant, she used to take me to theatre openings, which she loved and I would drive us to Stratford because she hated driving. She would take me shopping to her favourite designers and was always so proud to include me in a negotiation,” Goldhar remembered.
Cooper routinely invited interns and assistants to learn valuable lessons in deal-making in her Toronto office. “She loved to teach them about the business and would always invite them to sit in her office and listen in on her calls so they could learn how to speak to the clients or hear her doing a deal,” Goldhar recounted.
As a theatrical agent, Cooper had many clients in Hollywood releases – like Mena Massoud of Disney’s Aladdin fame — and local stage productions. Actor Matthew G Brown in a Jan. 2 Instagram post recalled the vital support he received from Cooper as his agent, going all the way back to his upstart teen acting years.
“Ronda Cooper shaped my career. For 20+ years I worked with her and she worked so hard for me to be in the position I am today. Anything I am as an actor and anything I might be, I owe it to her influence. Thank you Ronda for sticking by this young Regent Park kid with big dreams. Know that you are one of the reasons I will always keep pushing,” Brown wrote.
Theater producer and entertainment lawyer Derrick Chua on Facebook also praised Cooper as an industry stalwart. “Saddened to hear that fabulous talent agent Ronda Cooper has passed away. One of the first agents I ever dealt with as a young theatre producer, and one I would continue to see and chat with at so many shows over the years, who was always so supportive of her clients and Canadian theatre. Rest in peace Ronda,” he wrote.
Cooper is survived by her daughter, Tina Cooper, and her granddaughter Cooper Rose Critchley.
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