| David Strathairn |
| Birth name |
David Russell Strathairn |
| Born |
January 26 1949 (1949--) (age 58)
San Francisco, California,
United States |
| Spouse(s) |
Logan Goodman Strathairn (2 children) |
|
|
David Russell Strathairn (born January 26 1949) is an
Academy Award-nominated American film, television, and stage
actor.
Biography
Personal life
Strathairn was born in San Francisco, California. His father was a physician.[1] He is of Scottish ancestry through his paternal
grandfather, Thomas Scott Strathairn (a native of Crieff, Perthshire) and Native Hawaiian ancestry through his paternal grandmother,
Lei.[2][3]
Strathairn attended Redwood High School in
Larkspur, California and graduated from Williams
College in Williamstown, Massachusetts in 1970. He studied at the Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Clown College in
Venice, Florida[4] and worked as a clown in a traveling
circus.
He is married to Logan Goodman Strathairn, a nurse, and the couple have two sons and live in
the mid-Hudson Valley area of upstate New York, near Poughkeepsie, about 90 minutes by Metro-North
Railroad from New York City.[4][5][6] Their son Tay Strathairn, an actor and musician who
plays jazz piano, appeared in John Sayles's films Eight
Men Out (as "Bucky") and Lone Star (as "Young Sam").[4][6]
Career
Some of Strathairn's best-known film roles are his portrayals of the title character in Harrison's Flowers (2000), the wisecracking blind techie in
Sneakers (1992), Joe St. George in
Dolores Claiborne (1995), Theseus in the 1999 version of A Midsummer Night's Dream, and corrupt
baseball player Eddie Cicotte in 1988's Eight Men Out. However, he is often seen more as a character
actor, often appearing in supporting roles in many independent and Hollywood films. He has co-starred in Twisted as Ashley Judd's psychiatrist, in The River Wild as Meryl Streep's husband, as Tom Cruise's jailbird brother in The Firm, and as
Kim Basinger's pimp in L.A.
Confidential.
He has worked frequently with director John
Sayles, beginning with his film debut Return of the Secaucus 7,
and including the films Passion Fish, Matewan, Limbo, Lone
Star and City of Hope, for which Strathairn won the
Independent Spirit Award. Notably, alongside Sayles, he played one of the Men
in Black in Sayles's 1983 film The Brother from Another
Planet
Strathairn's television work includes a wide range of roles, including "Moss", the bookselling nebbish on the critically
acclaimed The Days and Nights of Molly Dodd; Captain Keller,
the father of Helen in the 2000 remake of The Miracle Worker; and a far-out
(both figuratively and literally) televangelist in Paradise, the pilot episode for a TV
series on Showtime that did not move forward.[7] Strathairn also had a recurring role on the hit TV drama
The Sopranos.
In 2005, he appeared in the leading role in Good Night, and Good
Luck., a theatrical biopic in which he portrayed the famed CBS newsman Edward R. Murrow in his clash with Senator Joseph McCarthy over his Communist "witch hunt" in the 1950s.
Strathairn received Best Actor Golden Globe, Screen Actors Guild (SAG), and Academy Award nominations for
his performance in the film. Among his recent films are: We Are...Marshall, a
2006 film about the resurrection of Marshall University's football program after the
1970 plane crash that killed most of the team; and Hereafter, set in the aftermath of the
2004 Sumatran tsunami, directed by Michael Patwin (in
pre-production).[8]
Strathairn plays the lead role opposite Andrew Walker in the 2007 independent film, "Steel
Toes", a film by David Gow (writer/co-director/producer)and Mark Adam(co-
director/DOP/editor). The film is based on Gow's stage play "Cherry Docs" in which Strathairn starred for its American Premiere
at The Wilma Theatre in Philadelphia.
Strathairn plays a lead role opposite Matt Damon in the summer 2007 film
The Bourne Ultimatum and appears in Paramount Pictures' forthcoming children's film "The Spiderwick Chronicles" (2008) as "Arthur Spiderwick".
He is also an accomplished stage actor and has performed over thirty theatrical roles on stage. Most recently, he performed
several roles in stage plays by 2005 Nobel Laureate Harold Pinter. He played Stanley in
two consecutive New York Classic Stage
Company (CSC) productions of Pinter's 1957 play The Birthday
Party, directed by Carey Perloff (since 1992 artistic director of the American Conservatory Theatre), in 1988 [9] and 1989[10]; the dual roles of prison Officer and Prisoner in Pinter's 1989 play Mountain Language (in a double bill with the second CSC Rep production of The Birthday
Party)[11]; and Devlin, opposite
Lindsay Duncan's Rebecca, in Pinter's 1996 two-hander Ashes to Ashes in the 1999 New York premiere by the Roundabout Theatre Company.[12][1]
Filmography
References
- ^ a b "David Strathairn Biography (1949-)", Film Reference.com, accessed August 7, 2007.
- ^ http://www.sundaymail.co.uk/lifestyle/features/tm_objectid=16749011&method=full&siteid=64736&headline=secret-scottish-roots-of-best-actor-nominee-david-name_page.html
- ^ "David Strathairn Finds the Spotlight: David Strathairn Is the Kind of Actor You Know by Face,
If Not by Name, But an Oscar Nomination on Tuesday for Best Actor Could Change All That", BBC.co.uk January 26, 2006, Entertainment,
accessed August 7, 2007. (Includes video clip.)
- ^ a b c Full biography
of "David
Strathairn", Yahoo! Movies, Copyright © 2007, accessed August 7, 2007.
- ^ "Profile: David Strathairn", Hello!, Copyright ©
2001-2007 , accessed August 7, 2007.
- ^ a b Tay Strathairn at the Internet Movie Database
- ^ Paradise (2004) (TV) at the Internet Movie
Database
- ^ David Strathairn at the Internet Movie Database, accessed
August 7, 2007.
- ^ Performance revs. by Susan Hollis Merritt, "The Birthday Party"
(CSC Repertory Theatre, New York, 17 April 1988, 12 Apr. 1988–22 May 1988) and
Bernard Dukore, "The Birthday Party" (CSC Repertory Theatre, New York, April–May 1988), The Pinter Review 2.1 (1988):
66-70; 71-73. (Cover photograph features Strathairn in his role as Stanley.)
- ^ 1989 CSC production,
HaroldPinter.org (official site), accessed August 7, 2007.
- ^ Susan Hollis Merritt, "A Conversation with Carey Perloff,
Bill Moor, Peter Riegert, Jean Stapleton, and
David Strathairn: After Matinee of Mountain Language and The Birthday Party by CSC Repertory Ltd.,
Bruno's, New York, 12 Nov. 1989", The Pinter Review: Annual Essays 1989 (TPR) (Tampa: U of Tampa P, 1989) 59-84
(interview); cf. performance rev. by Francis Gillen, "Mountain Language,
The Birthday Party" TPR 93-97. (Cover photograph features Strathairn
and Stapleton in their roles as a prison Officer and the Elderly Woman in Mountain Language; his other role, the Prisoner,
is the Elderly Woman's son.)
- ^ Performance revs. by Katherine H. Burkman, "Ashes to Ashes in New York: Roundabout Theatre
Company at the Gramercy Theatre, March 30, 1999" and by Susan Hollis Merritt, "Ashes to Ashes in New York:
Roundabout Theatre Company, Gramercy Theatre, New York, 3 April 1999", The Pinter Review: Collected Essays 1997 and 1998
(Tampa: U of Tampa P, 1999) 154-59.
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