Peter Weller

Peter Frederick Weller (Stevens Point, Wisconsin, June 24, 1947) is an American film and stage actor, director and lecturer.

He is best known to moviegoers as the eponymous character of RoboCop in the first two RoboCop movies as well as Buckaroo Banzai in the cult classic The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension. He received an Academy Award nomination for his direction and acting in the 1993 short Partners.

Biography

Early life

Weller was born in Stevens Point, Wisconsin, the son of Dorothy, a homemaker, and Frederick Weller, a lawyer, federal judge, and former helicopter pilot for the Army^[1] who often flew President Lyndon B. Johnson. Weller had a "middle-class Catholic" upbringing.^[2] As a result of his father's army work, Weller spent many years abroad during his childhood. His family lived in Germany for several years before eventually moving to Texas, where he attended Alamo Heights High School in San Antonio. While enrolled at North Texas State University (now the University of North Texas), he played trumpet in one of the campus bands. He graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in Theatre, and began his acting career after graduating from the American Academy of Dramatic Arts.

Career

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Weller's stage career began in the 1970s with appearances on Broadway in Full Circle, directed by Otto Preminger, and Summer Brave, William Inge's rewrite of his play Picnic. About this time, he became a member of the famed Actors' Studio.

He has appeared in more than 50 films and television series, including turns as the title characters in the cult classic The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension, and blockbuster hits RoboCop and RoboCop 2. He has also appeared in such critically acclaimed movies as Woody Allen's Mighty Aphrodite, the Oliver Stone-produced The New Age and Naked Lunch.

In 1995, he appeared in Screamers, a science-fiction film based on the short story "Second Variety" by Philip K. Dick and directed by Christian Duguay. Duguay would later direct Weller in the TV series Engineering an Empire for the History Channel.

On television, he played the shuttle captain in the short-lived show Odyssey 5 and made guest appearances as Terran supremacist John Frederick Paxton in the Star Trek: Enterprise episodes "Demons" and "Terra Prime".

Weller has also directed various projects for television, including episodes of Homicide: Life on the Street, Monk, and three episodes of the aforementioned Odyssey 5. He directed a 1997 adaptation of Elmore Leonard's Gold Coast starring David Caruso and Marg Helgenberger after previously starring in a version of Leonard's thriller Cat Chaser.

Weller is a contributor to the History Channel in several productions, credited as "Peter Weller, Syracuse University," where he is an adjunct faculty member. He is a graduate student in art history at UCLA, focusing on the Italian renaissance. Weller also hosts the series Engineering an Empire for the network.

In 2006, Weller joined the cast of 24 as terrorist collaborator Christopher Henderson. Weller received a "cheer" in TV Guide's "Cheers & Jeers" section for his performance. In December 2006, Weller starred as architect Frank Lloyd Wright at Chicago's Goodman Theatre in Frank's Home, a new play by Richard Nelson.

Personal life

Weller is a fan of Italian filmmaker Michelangelo Antonioni, who directed him in Beyond the Clouds. In an interview in Cigar Aficionado magazine, he was quoted as saying:

"There is no director living except maybe Kurosawa, Bergman, or Antonioni that I would fall down and do anything for. I met Antonioni three years ago in Taormina at a film festival. I introduced myself and told him that I adored his movies, his contributions to film, because he was the first guy who really started making films about the reality of the vacuity between people, the difficulty in traversing this space between lovers in modern day... and he never gives you an answer, Antonioni - that's the beautiful thing."^[2]

In 2004, Weller completed a Master's degree in Roman and Renaissance Art at Syracuse University and occasionally teaches courses in ancient history at the university. He was a commenter on the History Channel's documentary, Rome: Engineering an Empire. Weller is currently finishing a Ph.D. at UCLA, in Italian Renaissance art history.^[3]

Weller is a cousin of In Plain Sight actor Fred Weller.

Filmography as actor

• Prey (2007)
• Undiscovered (2005)
• The Hard Easy (2005)
• Tower of the Firstborn (2004)
• The Order (2003)
• Styx (2001)
• Dark Prince: The True Story of Dracula (2000)
• Ivans XTC (2000)
• The Contaminated Man (2000)
• Falling Through (2000)
• Shadow Hours (2000)
• Diplomatic Siege (1999)
• Guardiani del cielo, I (1998)
• Top of the World (1997)
• Mighty Aphrodite (1995)
• Screamers (1995)
• Beyond the Clouds (1995)
• Decoy (1995)
• The New Age (1994)
• The Substitute Wife (1994)

• Sunset Grill (1993)
• Fifty/Fifty (1992)
• Naked Lunch (1991)
• Robocop 2 (1990)
• Cat Chaser (1989)
• Leviathan (1989)
• Shakedown (1988)
• Robocop (1987)
• A Killing Affair (1986)
• Firstborn (1984)
• The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension (1984)
• Of Unknown Origin (1983)
• Shoot the Moon (1982)
• Just Tell Me What You Want (1980)
• Butch and Sundance: The Early Days (1979)
• Silence (1975)

Award nominations

• (1988) Saturn Award for Best Actor - RoboCop

• (1992) Genie Award for Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role - Naked Lunch

• (1993) Academy Award for Best Live Action Short Film - Partners

• (2002) Independent Spirit Award for Best Supporting Male - Ivans XTC

References

External links

• Peter Weller at the Internet Movie Database
• Peter Weller at TV.com
• Peter Weller at the Internet Broadway Database
• History Channel's Engineering an Empire site

• Peter Weller at Memory Alpha (a Star Trek wiki)
• "RoboCop in Rome!" New York Daily News
• "RoboCop, PhD" Wired News