Tom Hulce

Tom Hulce
Tom Hulce, December 2006
Born	Thomas Edward Hulce December 6, 1953 (1953-12-06) (age 55) Whitewater, Wisconsin, USA

Thomas Edward "Tom" Hulce (born December 6, 1953) is an American actor and producer perhaps best known for playing Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart in the feature film Amadeus.

Early life

Hulce was born in Whitewater, Wisconsin and raised in Plymouth, Michigan. His mother, Joanna (née Winkleman), sang with Phil Spitalny's All-Girl Orchestra, and his father, Raymond Albert Hulce, worked for the Ford Motor Company.^{[1] [2][3]} He wanted to be a singer as a small child, but switched to acting when his voice changed.

He graduated from Interlochen Arts Academy and then obtained his degree from North Carolina School of the Arts.

Career

Hulce's first film role was in the James Dean-influenced film 9/30/55 in 1977. His next was in the highly popular National Lampoon's Animal House (1978). In 1984, he was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor for his performance as Mozart in Amadeus, losing to his co-star, F. Murray Abraham. Other films include Echo Park (1986), Slam Dance (1987), Shadow Man (1988), Dominick and Eugene (1988), Parenthood (1989), The Inner Circle (1991), Fearless (1993), Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (1994), and The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1996) (as the voice of the protagonist Quasimodo), which, along with the sequel, would be his last main role in the movies. He had bit parts in the recent movies Jumper (2008) and Stranger Than Fiction (2006). He also played 1960s civil rights activist Michael Schwerner in the 1990 TV-movie Murder in Mississippi.

Hulce produced the film adaptation of Michael Cunningham's A Home at the End of the World directed by Michael Mayer, who later directed Hulce's project Spring Awakening on Broadway.

On Broadway, Hulce starred in A Memory of Two Mondays, Equus, and A Few Good Men, for which he was Tony Award nominee in 1990. He appeared in the groundbreaking early AIDS-era drama The Normal Heart in London's West End and Hamlet at the Shakespeare Theater. His regional theatre credits include Eastern Standard at the Seattle Repertory Theatre.

Hulce is a producer of the Tony Award-winning Broadway hit Spring Awakening. He shepherded two other major projects to fruition: the six-hour, two-evening stage adaptation of John Irving's The Cider House Rules, and Talking Heads, a festival of Alan Bennett's plays which won six Obie Awards, a Drama Desk Award, a special Outer Critics Circle Award, and a New York Drama Critics' Circle Award for Best Play. Hulce also headed 10 Million Miles a musical project by Keith Bunin and Grammy Award-nominated singer-songwriter Patty Griffin, that premiered in Spring 2007 at the Atlantic Theater Company.

Hulce has been nominated for four Golden Globes, two Helen Hayes Awards and has won an Emmy Award for his performance in The Heidi Chronicles, as well as his aforementioned Tony award for producing the musical Spring Awakening.

References

External links

• Tom Hulce at the Internet Broadway Database
• Tom Hulce at the Internet Off-Broadway Database
• Tom Hulce at the Internet Movie Database
• Butz, Doris. "Amadeus Reinvents Himself", Playbill, 5 December 2006