Ron Silver Gone

By DAVID K. LI

March 15, 2009 –Actor and longtime political activist Ron Silver died Sunday morning, succumbing to a long battle with cancer, friends of the liberal Democrat-turned-GOP stalwart told The Post.

“Ron Silver died peacefully in his sleep with his family around him this morning,” said Robin Bronk, executive director of the Creative Coalition, which Silver helped create.

“He had been fighting esophageal cancer for two years and his family is making arrangements for a private service.”

Friends of Silver first told Post columnist Cindy Adams of the native New Yorker’s death.

The steely-eyed, blunt-talking Silver, 62, enjoyed a long career on the stage, TV and in movies, and most recently hosted a public affairs talk show on Sirius satellite radio.

Silver might be best known for playing legal scholar Alan Dershowitz in “Reversal of Fortune,” about the successful appeal of Claus von Bulow’s conviction for putting his socialite wife into a permanent coma.