Nicholas Hammond
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| Nicholas Hammond | |
|---|---|
| Born | May 15, 1950  Washington, District of Columbia, USA |
| Spouse(s) | Laura Soli (1978-1984) |
Nicholas Hammond (born May 15, 1950) is an American actor best known for his roles as Friedrich von Trapp in The Sound of Music and Peter Parker/Spider-Man in The Amazing Spider-Man.
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[edit] Early life and career
The son of actress Eileen Bennett, Hammond was 10 when he made his first movie appearance in Lord of the Flies.
Besides his subsequent work as Spider-Man, Hammond's most visible screen role was as Friedrich von Trapp in the 1965 megahit The Sound of Music. During the filming of The Sound of Music he grew six inches, from 5ft 3in to 5ft 9in. In 1973, he made a memorable guest appearance on The Brady Bunch as the high school BMOC Doug Simpson, who loses interest in Marcia after her tragic football accident ("Oh, my nose!"). After making the transition from juvenile to young leading man, he spent several seasons in daytime soaps such as General Hospital.
He remains close friends with all six of his Sound of Music siblings; in fact, during their reunion on the 40th anniversary DVD, he went so far as to say, "You're my best friends in the world". In late 1970s, Hammond re-joined fellow The Sound of Music alumna Heather Menzies (who played Louisa von Trapp) for one episode of the TV adaptation of Logan's Run.
Nicholas Hammond is a graduate of Princeton University, where he wrote his senior thesis on the "Great Odes of John Keats" at the same time that he was appearing eight times a week as the lead in a play on Broadway.
[edit] Spider-Man
Hammond starred in the The Amazing Spider-Man TV series from 1977 to mid 1979. The series aired sporadically on CBS with 13 episodes airing over two seasons. A pilot movie appeared in the fall of 1977, with the series returning as a mid season replacement for five episodes in the spring of 1978. While the show did well in the ratings, CBS was unwilling to commit to a regular timeslot. The second season aired six hour long episodes in the fall of 1978 and winter of 1979, with a final two-hour episode concluding in the summer of that year. Hammond was the first actor to portray Peter Parker and Spider-Man in live-action. The Electric Company aired Spidey Super Stories starting in 1974, but the series did not feature Peter Parker. Even though Hammond played Peter Parker in the television series, in all of the scenes in which Spider-Man is seen crawling on walls or web-slinging, Spider-Man was portrayed by a stuntman.
[edit] Later career
Nicholas Hammond moved to Australia in the mid-80s, after being cast as yachtsman Denis Connor in an Australian TV mini-series of the time, and decided to stay. Since then, he has appeared in several television mini-series that have been filmed in Australia, including Moby-Dick, On the Beach and Salem's Lot. Nicholas Hammond had a starring role, as "Sir Ivor Creevy-Thorne", in Mirror, Mirror, an Australia / New Zealand extended mini-series (a complete story of 20 serialised episodes, with cliffhangers between each of the episodes). Hammond also guest-starred in various Australian television series, including satirical television programs such as BackBerner and CNNNN, and the science fiction program Farscape, and also dramatic series such as The Flying Doctors, MDA and the Australian / United States co-production Mission: Impossible (which was filmed in Australia).
Nicholas Hammond is also a writer for Australian television, having written both the critically acclaimed mini-series A Difficult Woman and the TV movie, Secret Men's Business, to this day the highest rated show ever aired on television by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. He lives in Sydney with his partner, the acclaimed actress Robyn Nevin.
