From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

David Russell Strathairn (born January 26, 1949) is an American actor.

Life

Strathairn was born in San Francisco, California, the son of a physician.^[1] He has 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 Bucky) and Lone Star (as Young Sam).^[4][5]

Career

Strathairn was Academy Award-nominated for his portrayal of 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. Other notable 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 Several years later, Strathairn created the role of Edwin Booth with Maryann Plunkett in a workshop production of Booth! A House Divided, by W. Stuart McDowell, at the Players in New York City.^[6]

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.^[7] Strathairn also had a recurring role on the hit TV drama The Sopranos. Strathairn also starred in the second season episode, Out Where the Buses Don't run, in Miami Vice

Among Strathairn's recent films are: We Are...Marshall, a 2006 film about the rebirth of Marshall University's football program after the 1970 plane crash that killed most of the team's members; and Hereafter, set in the aftermath of the 2004 Sumatran tsunami, directed by Michael Patwin (in pre-production).^[8] In 2006 he did a campaign ad for then congressional candidate (now, senator-appointee) Kirsten Gillibrand. He reprised his role as Edward R. Murrow 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. Strathairn appeared in the American Experience PBS anthology series documentary, The Trials of J. Robert Oppenheimer, (2009) a biography of the physicist.

Strathairn plays William Flynn in the lead role of "No God, No Master". Flynn (Strathairn) is an F.B.I. agent dealing with anarchism set in 1920's New York City. His constant struggles with the Red Scare set him into a universe of power, greed and corruption, forcing him to confront the very principles and values that make him an American.

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^[9] and 1989;^[10] 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);^[11] 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.^[1][12]

Political involvement

Strathairn narrated a biographical video that was aired to introduce Barack Obama prior to his acceptance speech at the 2008 Democratic National Convention.^[13]

Filmography

References

External links

• David Strathairn at the Internet Movie Database
• David Strathairn at the Internet Broadway Database
• David Strathairn at TV.com

Interviews

• David Strathairn talks about his involvement with the play adaptation of Stud's Terkel's Will the Circle Be Unbroken? with The State of Things on North Carolina Public Radio