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Keith Szarabajka (born December 2, 1952, in Oak Park, Illinois)1 is an American actor, voice actor, and audiobook narrator. He is best known for his long-running role as Mickey Kostmayer on the CBS action series The Equalizer, for playing the vampire hunter Daniel Holtz in Angel, and for major voice performances in video games including Fallout: New Vegas, Halo 4, and Mass Effect 2.1 He contributed a guest voice to the Extreme Ghostbusters animated series in 1997.2
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Szarabajka was born in Oak Park, Illinois, to Anne, a school teacher, and Edward Szarabajka, a savings and loan officer who was also a decorated World War II veteran, having received the Silver Star, two Bronze Stars, and the Purple Heart for service in North Africa and Italy.1 He attended Campion Jesuit High School in Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin, and John Hersey High School in Arlington Heights, Illinois.1 He went on to earn degrees from the University of Chicago and Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas.1
From 1972 to 1978, Szarabajka trained at Chicago's Organic Theater, a formative ensemble that shaped many prominent careers.1 During that period he co-wrote the play Bleacher Bums alongside Joe Mantegna and Stuart Gordon, which became a celebrated Chicago theater piece later adapted for television.3
Szarabajka's stage roots run deep. Beyond his work at the Organic Theater, he originated the role of B.D. in the original Broadway production of Doonesbury, the 1983 musical adaptation of Garry Trudeau's comic strip.4
His screen debut came with a supporting role in Costa-Gavras's political thriller Missing (1982).1 Through the 1980s he steadily built a television presence, and his signature role arrived with The Equalizer (CBS, 1985-1989), where he played Mickey Kostmayer, the morally ambiguous operative who assists Edward Woodward's Robert McCall across 56 episodes.1
He gained a cult following in the early 2000s as Daniel Holtz, the 18th-century vampire hunter resurrected in the present day, across 11 episodes of Angel (season 3, 2001-2002).1 His film work includes The Dark Knight (2008), in which he played Gerard Stephens, and a role as Adam Engell in the Academy Award-winning Argo (2012).1
His extensive television guest credits span The X-Files, Star Trek: Voyager, Star Trek: Enterprise, Charmed, Roswell, 24, Law and Order, and nine episodes of Supernatural (2016-2020), making him one of the more reliably recognizable character actors in American television drama.1
Szarabajka is equally prolific as a voice artist. His most celebrated game performance is Joshua Graham, the haunted former leader of Caesar's Legion, in Fallout: New Vegas (2010) and its Honest Hearts DLC.1 His delivery of Graham's soft-spoken but intense dialogue made the character a fan favorite. He voiced the Didact, the primary antagonist of Halo 4 (2012), and Harbinger, the overarching villain of Mass Effect 2 (2010), along with Executor Pallin in the first Mass Effect (2007).1
Additional notable voice roles include Dr. Terrence Kyne in the Dead Space franchise, Archangel Azrael and the Crowfather across the Darksiders series, Ironhide in Transformers: War for Cybertron, Cornelius Slate in BioShock Infinite, Emile Dufraisne in Splinter Cell: Double Agent, and Gilgamesh in several Final Fantasy titles.5
His audiobook work earned him the 2001 Audie Award for Best Fiction, Unabridged, for narrating Tom Robbins's Fierce Invalids Home from Hot Climates.1 He has also narrated works by Dean Koontz and Michael Crichton, and appeared in a Grammy-nominated audio dramatization of The Maltese Falcon.5
Szarabajka voiced Crainiac in the Extreme Ghostbusters episode "Deadliners" (production number 104, aired September 5, 1997, written by Duane Capizzi and directed by Scott Wood).2 Crainiac is the leader of the Vathek, interdimensional entities described in the episode as spectral forms that enter the realm of the living through the act of writing. The episode revolves around the Vathek's alliance with horror novelist J.N. Kline and their plan to permanently manifest in the physical world by compelling Kline to finish a script that would make them indestructible. The new Extreme Ghostbusters team, including Kylie Griffin, Roland Jackson, Eduardo Rivera, and Garrett Miller, alongside Egon Spengler, must find a way to stop entities that cannot be trapped in the conventional sense. The episode's Vathek designs were conceived with Clive Barker's Hellraiser cenobites in mind, and the character J.N. Kline is a pastiche of Goosebumps author R.L. Stine.
Szarabajka was married to Jennifer Jay Stewart from April 30, 1994, to December 28, 2005.5 He has two children.1
Some content on this page was researched using the Ghostbusters Wiki on Fandom.
"Keith Szarabajka," Wikipedia, accessed 2026-06-13, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keith_Szarabajka. ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5 ↩6 ↩7 ↩8 ↩9 ↩10 ↩11 ↩12 ↩13 ↩14 ↩15
Paul Rudoff, "Extreme Ghostbusters Episode Guide," Spook Central, accessed 2026-06-13, https://www.spookcentral.us/sclib/extreme-ghostbusters-episode-guide.html; "Deadliners" episode page, Spook Central, accessed 2026-06-13, https://www.spookcentral.us/sclib/egb_ep_deadliners_htm. ↩ ↩2
"Bleacher Bums," Wikipedia, accessed 2026-06-13, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bleacher_Bums. ↩
"Doonesbury," IBDB, accessed 2026-06-13, https://www.ibdb.com/broadway-production/doonesbury-4240. See also: Playbill production listing, accessed 2026-06-13, https://playbill.com/production/doonesbury-biltmore-theatre-vault-0000001530. ↩
IMDb, Keith Szarabajka (nm0843775), accessed 2026-06-13, https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0843775/. ↩ ↩2 ↩3
