| David Ackroyd | |
|---|---|
| Born | May 30, 1940 Orange, New Jersey, U.S. |
| Occupation | Actor |
| Years active | 1969–present |
| Spouse | Ruth Liming (1963–present) |
David Ackroyd (born May 30, 1940) is an American actor, who first came to prominence in soap operas such as The Secret Storm and Another World. He was born in Orange, New Jersey, a suburb of Newark.
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Extended his all-stage career into film and television in the early 1970s, beginning with daytime leading man outings in The Secret Storm and Another World. He progressed to prime time work as Gary Ewing in Dallas until Ted Shackelford successfully took over the role when the character moved front and center with the spin-off drama Knots Landing. Coincidentally, Shackelford's last recurring role prior to Dallas was on "Another World". David's prime on-camera work occurred in the late 1970s with a series of strong co-star roles in the mini-series The Dark Secret of Harvest Home as the doomed Ned Constantine; The Word and the TV-movies And I Alone Survived, Exo-Man and Women in White.
He began to find supporting roles in such movies as The Mountain Men, The Sound of Murder, Wrestling with God, Dark Angel and Xena: Warrior Princess.
He also did the voice of John Cavanaugh/Prince Corran of Dar-Shan in the animated series Wildfire as well as several characters in The New Yogi Bear Show, The Greatest Adventure: Stories from the Bible, The Real Adventures of Jonny Quest and The New Adventures of Captain Planet.
On Broadway, Ackroyd appeared in Unlikely Heroes, a 1971 production of three plays based on the stories of Philip Roth; and Children of a Lesser God, in which he replaced John Rubinstein as the lead character, James Leeds, in 1981. Since the late 1990s and into the 2000s, Ackroyd has narrated documentary television series like History's Mysteries and UFO Files: "Alien Engineering".
Ackroyd moved to Montana in 1996 and in 2003 co-founded Alpine Theatre Project in Whitefish, a professional acting company which has featured appearances by such notable performers as Olympia Dukakis, John Lithgow and Kelli O'Hara. He is the company's Artistic Development Director.