Michael Lerner, a veteran character actor who received an Oscar nomination for his performance as an overbearing studio head in the 1991 film “Barton Fink,” has died, his nephew, actor Sam Lerner, announced in a post on social media. It was brilliantly written, and I just knew it,” Lerner said in 2016 of the “Barton Fink” script, adding that during his audition in front of directors Joel and Ethan Coen, “I did the monologue the way I wanted to do it and I just walked of the room and that was it. And Joel and Ethan were just sitting in a corner just laughing and laughing and that was it