Vernon Wells (actor)

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This article is about the Australian actor. For the American baseball player, see Vernon Wells.

Vernon Wells
Born	December 31, 1945 (1945-12-31) (age 62) Rushworth, Victoria, Australia
Other name(s)	Vernon G. Wells

Vernon George Wells (born December 31, 1945) is an Australian film and television actor who has built his career around action-type films, most often cast as a villain. He began appearing on Australian television shows in the mid-1970s, such as Homicide and Matlock Police and All The Rivers Run.

He is best known to international audiences for his role of "Wez", in the 1981 science fiction action film Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior. After Mad Max 2, Wells began appearing in Hollywood films, such as the military action film Commando (1985), which starred Arnold Schwarzenegger. In the 2000s, Wells acted the children's series Power Rangers: Time Force.

1 Career
- 1.1 1970s and 1980s
- 1.2 1990s and 2000s
2 Filmography
3 References
4 External links

[edit] Career

[edit] 1970s and 1980s

Wells was born in Rushworth, Victoria, Australia, the son of Eva Maude (née Jackson) and Michael Wells.^[1] Wells worked in a quarry, then as a salesman, and then in theatre and rock bands. In the 1970s, he was selected by casting agents to appear in a theatre play, and he started to appear in Australian TV commercials, print ads, local Australian TV shows such as Homicide and Matlock Police and historical TV mini-series like Against The Wind, Sara Dane and All The Rivers Run.

His first cinema appearance was a minor role in Felicity (1979), a low budget, erotic fantasy film. Later Wells was cast as the homicidal biker "Wez", in the big budget Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior (1981) filmed around Silverton near Broken Hill in outback New South Wales, Australia. It is the role for which he is probably best known to international audiences, as Wells portrays a psychotic, post-apocalyptic gang leader who relentlessly pursues hero Max Rockatansky (Mel Gibson), before meeting a spectacular death at the film's finale.

Hollywood beckoned for Wells, and he spoofed his mad biker role in the popular 1985 teen comedy Weird Science, written and directed by John Hughes and produced by Joel Silver. Wells so impressed Silver with his work in that film that he was immediately secured for the role of Bennett, who double-crosses Arnold Schwarzenegger in Commando (1985). When first approached for the role in Commando, Wells was in Australia working on the feature film, Fortress based on the real life Faraday School kidnapping, in a starring role opposite Rachel Ward. Wells appeared as a villain in Last Man Standing (1988).

[edit] 1990s and 2000s

In 1992, Wells appeared in one of the few roles in which he is not cast as a villain, in the short-lived 1992 television comedy series The Amazing Live Sea Monkeys. The show was about a professor who accidentally enlarged three Sea Monkeys to human-size, and then had to deal with their comical ineptness in the world.

Many of Wells' roles 1990s and 2000s portrayed villains, as in the films Circuitry Man (1990), Kick of Death (1997) and Starforce (2000), and Power Rangers: Time Force (2001). In the Power Rangers episodes, he played the role of Ransik, a mutant crime lord from the year 3000 who travels back in time to take over the world. In 2002, he also appeared in the Power Rangers Wild Force/Time Force two-part team-up episode entitled "Reinforcements From the Future," again in the role of Ransik.