Evan Handler (born January 10, 1961 in New York City) is an American actor and leukemia patient advocate who has appeared in films and television dramas and sitcoms including Six Feet Under, Law & Order, The West Wing, Miami Vice, Sex and the City, and was featured in one episode of Friends, Ed and 24. He was a co-star in the ABC sitcoms It's Like, You Know... and Hot Properties. Handler is also an author. His first book, Time On Fire: My Comedy of Terrors, told the story of his unlikely recovery from Acute myeloid leukemia in his mid-twenties. His second, It's Only Temporary...The Good News and the Bad News of Being Alive is due out in 2007.
Recently, he appeared as "Dave" on ABC's Lost and as staff writer Ricky Tahoe in the series Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip. He currently plays an agent in Californication on Showtime.
Handler graduated from Hendrick Hudson High School in Montrose, NY in 1979.
Wrote the book "Time on Fire: My Comedy of Terrors" (about his experience of being a leukemia patient) that was published in 1996 by Little, Brown, and Company. This book is reviewed and written about in great deal in the January, 2003 issue of "The Oprah Magazine" in an article about patient health-care advocacy.
Brother of Lowell Handler
Quit the Broadway show "I Hate Hamlet" mid-performance after his co-star Nicol Williamson hit him with a sword and chased him off stage. This situation was used as a plotline in the "NYPD Blue" (1993) episode "Cold Heaters" (Season 3, Episode 8)
Dropped out of the Broadway production of "Biloxi Blues" when he was diagnosed with cancer. He was Matthew Broderick's understudy. He also played Harold in the touring company of "Master Harold and the Boys," a role which Broderick played in a television production, and he appeared on "Sex and the City" (1998) with Broderick's wife, Sarah Jessica Parker.
