| Holter Graham | |
|---|---|
| Born | Holter Ford Graham[1] February 11, 1972 [1] Baltimore, Maryland, U.S. |
| Occupation | Actor, voice actor, film producer, film editor |
| Years active | 1986–present |
| Spouse | Neela Vaswani |
| Website | |
| www.holtergraham.com | |
Holter Ford Graham (born February 11, 1972) is an American actor and labor union leader. He made his feature film debut at the age of 13 in the 1986 comedy-horror film Maximum Overdrive.[2] In 2005, he produced and edited the short film The Diversion. From 2008 to 2010, he was the co-host of Wa$ted!, a reality television show on the Planet Green network that looks at the ecological footprint of individuals and families.[3]
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Holter Graham was born February 11, 1972, in Baltimore, Maryland, to Hugh Davis and Ann Clary Graham. His father was a noted historian of American politics and the American civil rights movement whose 1991 book, The Civil Rights Era: Origins and Development of National Policy, 1960–1972, was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize for History.[4] His father taught history at Johns Hopkins University and the University of Maryland at College Park.[4] His mother, Ann, is an attorney who was born and raised in Montana. His maternal great-grandfather, Thomas Clary, was the first sheriff in Fort Benton, Montana.[5] His grandfather, Robert Clary, had been a prominent lawyer in Great Falls, Montana, and his uncle Dick was a cattle rancher near Utica, Montana.[5] His mother's maternal grandfather was Anton M. Holter, a Montana businessman involved in electrical power generation for whom Holter Dam and Holter Lake are named.[5][6] Holter Graham is named after this ancestor.
Holter had an older brother, Hugh Patterson Graham. Hugh died in 1977 at the age of eight.[4] While growing up, Holter spent summers at his uncle's cattle ranch in Montana, where he learned ranching skills and was taught to be highly independent.[5]
The Grahams divorced, and Hugh Graham remarried. He died in 2002 at the age of 65.[4] Ann Clary married Jim Gordon, and as of 2011 they had residences in both Baltimore and Choteau, Montana.[5]
Holter Graham attended Friends School of Baltimore, a PreK-to-12 private Quaker school. Rebellious and constantly in trouble, "I was a little snot-nosed brat" Graham admits.[2] In junior and high school, he wore sleeveless shirts, spiked leather bracelets, and cowboy boots (he owned 23 pairs of them).[2] He played in several rock and roll bands, was notorious for his extreme behavior at parties (he once drank half a bottle of cooking oil), and owned a Datsun sports car which he turned into a hot rod that could spout flame from its exhaust pipes.[2] He also had a lengthy disciplinary record: He once rigged another student's backpack explode, he put a rubber snake in a teacher's desk, and he filled his pickup truck's bed with water on a hot day and drove it to school as an improvised swimming pool.[2]
Graham graduated from Skidmore College in 1994 with a bachelor's degree in English.[7] He received a Master of Fine Arts in fiction and poetry in 1999 from Vermont College of Fine Arts.[7] He is also a certified automotive and motorcycle mechanic.[7]
Graham received his first professional acting role at the age of 13, when he was cast in Maximum Overdrive, a horror film written and directed by Stephen King (and based on one of King's own short stories).[2] While on the set, Graham became lifelong environmentalist after he needed to throw away a soda can and could not find a trash can.[3]
In 1988, Baltimore-based filmmaker John Waters cast him in the film Hairspray.[2] At the age of 17, he appeared in the episode "The Black Cat" in the horror anthology film Two Evil Eyes, and had a small part in Waters' Cry-Baby.[2] He made his television debut in 1992 in an episode of the syndicated teenage drama series Swans Crossing (an early vehicle for Sarah Michelle Gellar).[2]
His first adult role came as Barry, the mechanic and ultralight aircraft builder in the 1996 Oscar-nominated independent film Fly Away Home.[2] He was cast after lead actress Anna Paquin (then just 14 years old) heard his audition tape and approved his participation in the film.[2] The picture brought him national attention but little work. Graham became a resident of New York City, and began doing voice-over performances and auditioning for roles (on occasion, as many as 12 times a month).[2] While appearing in an Off-Off-Broadway play, he earned the nickname "Adonis" after impressing women with the way he flipped his then-trademark ponytail hairstyle from the front of his face to the nape of his neck.[2]
Since 1996, he has appeared in eight more films and guest-starred on nine television series. He has also performed more than 75 audiobooks, appeared in and voiced dozens of commercials, and in 2008 was the voice of the HBO cable network.[8]
Graham joined the Screen Actors Guild (SAG) in 1988, and the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (AFTRA) in 1995.[8] In 2007, Graham was elected to a two-year term as president of AFTRA's New York chapter.[9] He was re-elected in 2009[10] and again in 2011.[11] Graham subsequently was elected to the AFTRA national board of directors to a two-year term in 2009[12] and reelected in 2011.[13]
Graham has openly endorsed (as an individual, not as a union officer) the SAG caucus known as One.Strong.Union (OSU).[14][15] In 2011, OSU supported a slate of officers challenging the incumbent caucus, United Screen Actors Nationwide (USAN), which had controlled SAG's New York state chapter for many years.[14] Graham also endorsed actor Sam Robards, an OSU member, for the presidency of SAG New York.[15]
Graham is married to Dr. Neela Vaswani,[16] an author who won an O. Henry Prize in 2006 for her short story "The Pelvis Series" and an Italo Calvino Prize in 1999 for her short story "The Excrement Man".
They met at Skidmore College in 1994 during the production of a play (he was acting in it, she was a member of the stage crew).[5] One of Vaswani's professors, Barry Goldensohn, offered to introduce her to Graham, but she refused.[17] Goldensohn invited both of them to a poetry reading given by his wife, and introduced them to one another anyway.[17] It became their first date.[17]
They lived in New York City and dated for two years before deciding to marry.[5] Their wedding, which incorporated marriage practices from the Hindu, Jewish, Quaker, and Roman Catholic religions as well as marriage rituals common to the Indian, Irish, Métis, Norwegian, and Scottish people, took more than a year to plan.[5] Held outdoors in a grove of aspen trees near Choteau, the wedding included local Montana musicians and craftsmen and a hike to nearby Our Lake.[5]
Graham fell ill with B cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia in April 2010.[18][19] He underwent 10 months of chemotherapy, was hospitalized, had several relapses, and suffered heavily from complications related to his treatment.[5] His leukemia went into remission in mid 2011.[5]
In this section, the date of publication of the audiobook, not the original work, is shown.