Career Highlights: Without a Trace: Season 05, Without a Trace: Season 04, Without a Trace: Season 02
First Major Screen Credit: Hercules and the Lost Kingdom (1994)
Biography
Actor Eric Close found his breakthrough role on the prime-time serial drama Sisters (1991), opposite Julianne Phillips, Sela Ward, and Swoosie Kurtz. Close's performance as a policeman in the sixth season of the program established his onscreen reputation as a solid and reliable performer. Alongside that program, Close landed roles in low-rent films such as Hercules and the Lost Kingdom (1994) and the made-for-television soaper The Stranger Beside Me (1995). The actor then received second billing after small-screen mainstay Michael Biehn in the Western series The Magnificent Seven (1998), joined the regular cast of the short-lived sci-fi drama The Sky Is Falling (1999), and scored a lead in Glenn Gordon Caron's eccentric, short-lived superhero series Now and Again. Close drew his largest audience, however, with his contributions to the outstanding crime-investigation drama Without a Trace, as Martin Fitzgerald, the missing-persons agent amorously, and perhaps unwisely, involved with colleague Samantha Spade (Poppy Montgomery). ~ Nathan Southern, All Movie Guide
Eric Close (born May 24, 1967, Staten Island, New York) is an American film and television actor.
His father is an orthopedic surgeon, and Close is the eldest of three brothers. His family moved to Indiana, then to Michigan, and finally settled in San Diego when Close was seven years old.
Close graduated with a B.A. in Communications at the University of Southern California in 1989, where he became a member of the Sigma Chi Fraternity. He married his wife Keri in 1995 and has two daughters, Katie and Ella. They are members of the Brentwood Presbyterian Church.[1]
Close was interested in acting from an early age and had some stage experience in school, but did not decide to pursue an acting career until after college. His first role was in a theater production Rat Songs in L.A., after which he was offered a part in the film American Me (1992) and Safe House directed by Elena Mannus. He had a brief stint in daytime when he played Sawyer Walker on NBC's daytime drama Santa Barbara.
He returned to the stage with Thanksgiving Cries. He has had many guest appearances on television, and landed leading roles on such shows as McKenna (one season, 1994-1995), Dark Skies (one season, 1996-1997), The Magnificent Seven (two seasons, 1998-1999), Now and Again (one season, 1999-2000), and the Steven Spielberg produced miniseries Taken (2002).