David Strathairn

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David Strathairn

Born David Russell Strathairn
January 26, 1949 (1949-01-26) (age 59)
San Francisco, California
Years active 1980 - present
Spouse(s) Logan Goodman

David Russell Strathairn (born January 26, 1949) is an Academy Award-nominated American film, television, and stage actor.

Contents

[edit] Biography

[edit] Personal life

Strathairn was born in San Francisco, California, the son of 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 briefly worked as a clown in a traveling circus.

He is married to Logan Goodman Strathairn, a nurse. They have two sons and live in the mid-Hudson Valley area of upstate New York, near Poughkeepsie. Their son Tay, an actor and musician who plays jazz piano, appeared in John Sayles' films Eight Men Out (as "Eddie Ciccotte") and Lone Star (as "Young Sam").[4][5]

[edit] Career

Strathairn's best-known film roles include 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, Duke of Athens, in the 1999 version of A Midsummer Night's Dream; and corrupt baseball player Eddie Cicotte in 1988's Eight Men Out.

Strathairn is often regarded as a character actor, appearing in supporting roles in many independent and Hollywood films. In this capacity, 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 his Williams College classmate and director John Sayles, beginning with his film debut in Return of the Secaucus 7, and including the films Passion Fish, Matewan, Limbo and City of Hope, for which Strathairn won the Independent Spirit Award. Alongside Sayles, he played one of the Men in Black in the 1983 film The Brother from Another Planet

Strathairn's television work includes a wide range of roles: "Moss", the bookselling nebbish on the critically-acclaimed The Days and Nights of Molly Dodd; Captain Keller, the father of Helen Keller 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 was not successful.[6] Strathairn also had a recurring role on the hit TV drama The Sopranos.

In 2005, Strathairn played the leading role of famed CBS newsman Edward R. Murrow in the biopic Good Night, and Good Luck, which explored Murrow's clash with Senator Joseph McCarthy over McCarthy's Communist "witch hunt" in the 1950s. Strathairn received Best Actor Golden Globe, Screen Actors Guild (SAG), and Academy Award nominations for his performance.

Among Strathairn's 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).[7] In 2006 he did a campaign ad for then congressional candidate now representative Kirsten Gillibrand. He reprised his role as Edward R. Morrow in a speech similar to the one given in the film Good Night and Good Luck but altered to reference Gillibrand's opponent John Sweeney.

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 at its American Premiere at The Wilma Theatre in Philadelphia.

Strathairn also played a lead role opposite Matt Damon in the summer 2007 film The Bourne Ultimatum and appeared in Paramount Pictures' children's film The Spiderwick Chronicles (2008) as Arthur Spiderwick.

[edit] Theater

Strathairn is an accomplished stage actor and has performed over thirty theatrical roles. 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 [8] and 1989[9]; 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)[10]; Kerner, in Tom Stoppard's Hapgood (1994); 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.[11][1]

[edit] Filmography

[edit] References

  1. ^ a b "David Strathairn Biography (1949-)", Film Reference.com, accessed August 7, 2007.
  2. ^ Secret Scottish Roots Of Best Actor Nominee David - The Sunday Mail
  3. ^ "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.)
  4. ^ a b Full biography of "David Strathairn", Yahoo! Movies, Copyright © 2007, accessed August 7, 2007.
  5. ^ Tay Strathairn at the Internet Movie Database
  6. ^ Paradise (2004) (TV) at the Internet Movie Database
  7. ^ David Strathairn at the Internet Movie Database, accessed August 7, 2007.
  8. ^ 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.)
  9. ^ 1989 CSC production, HaroldPinter.org (official site), accessed August 7, 2007.
  10. ^ 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.)
  11. ^ 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.

[edit] External links

Awards
Preceded by
Javier Bardem
for Mar Adentro		 Volpi Cup for Best Actor
2005
for Good Night, and Good Luck		 Succeeded by
Ben Affleck
for Hollywoodland