DAVID HYDE PIERCE Biography - Actors and Actresses

 
 

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DAVID HYDE PIERCE

Name: David Hyde Pierce.                                                               
Born: 3 April 1959 Saratoga Springs, New York, United States                           
                                                                                       
David Hyde Pierce (born April 3, 1959) is a Screen Actors Guild, Tony and Emmy         
Award-winning American actor, best known for his co-starring role as                   
psychiatrist Dr. Niles Crane on the NBC sitcom Frasier alongside Kelsey Grammer.       
                                                                                       
Pierce was born in Saratoga Springs, New York, the youngest child of George Hyde       
Pierce, an insurance agent and aspiring actor, and Laura Marie Hughes. He             
has two older sisters, Barbara and Nancy, and an older brother, Thomas. As a           
child he became very interested in the piano and frequently played organ at the       
local Bethesda Episcopal Church in Saratoga Springs. He began acting in high           
school and was recognized as best Dramatic Arts student. He also received the         
Yaddo Medal for character and scholarship, and worked in theater while a               
counselor at Camp Kabeyun, in New Hampshire. However, his love of music was           
still strong so he decided to study classical piano at Yale University.               
Unfortunately, he soon grew bored with music history lessons and found that he         
wasn’t dedicated enough to practice the required amount of hours to become a         
successful concert pianist. Instead, he graduated in 1981 with a double major in       
English and Theatre Arts. Pierce then moved to New York City, where he worked         
several menial jobs (including selling ties at Bloomingdale's and working as a         
security guard) while acting in the theater during the late 1980s and early 1990s.     
                                                                                       
Pierce's first big television break came in the early 1990s with Norman Lear's         
The Powers That Be. Pierce played Theodore, a Congressman on the political             
comedy. Despite positive reviews from critics, the show was cancelled after a         
brief run. Pierce has commented in interviews that the cancellation came as a         
shock to him and that he was very disappointed the show did not continue. His         
career would soon, however, take off with a role on another sitcom. Because of         
his physical resemblance to Kelsey Grammer, the role of Niles Crane on the             
Cheers spin-off Frasier was created for him. For this role, Pierce was nominated       
for a Best Supporting Actor Emmy for a record eleven consecutive years, winning       
in 1995, 1998, 1999 and 2004. For the last few years of the run of the show,           
Pierce was paid up to US$1 million per episode.                                       
                                                                                       
Pierce also acts in movies from time to time. He appeared alongside Jodie Foster       
in Little Man Tate, with Anthony Hopkins in Oliver Stone's Nixon, and alongside       
Ewan McGregor in Down With Love. He also provided the voice for Doctor Doppler         
in Disney's 42nd animated feature Treasure Planet, the walking stick in Pixar's       
A Bug's Life and Abe Sapien in Guillermo del Toro's Hellboy.                           
                                                                                       
In his role in Sleepless in Seattle Pierce plays Ryan's character's brother, a         
professor at the Johns Hopkins University. Upon his sister's admission that she       
has been fantasizing about the man in Seattle, Hyde-Pierce's character replies,       
“It rains nine months of the year in Seattle.” This was roughly one year before   
the start of Frasier.                                                                 
                                                                                       
In 2005, Pierce joined Tim Curry and others in the stage production Spamalot. In       
August/September 2006, he starred in Curtains, a new Kander and Ebb musical at         
the Ahmanson Theatre in Los Angeles, which transferred to Broadway in March 2007.     
On June 10, 2007 Pierce won the Tony Award for Best Performance by a Leading           
Actor in a Musical at the 61st Tony Awards for his role in Curtains. On November       
19, 2007, Pierce was awarded an Honorary Doctor of Fine Arts Degree from Niagara       
University in Lewiston, New York.                                                     
                                                                                       
Pierce has a distinctive voice and, like his Frasier co-star Kelsey Grammer, is       
often called upon to provide voice work. Some of his more notable roles in this       
calling include the walking stick insect Slim in A Bug's Life, Doctor Delbert         
Doppler in Disney's film Treasure Planet, and the amphibian Abe Sapien in             
Hellboy (of note is the fact that Pierce refused credit for his Hellboy role,         
because he felt that it was Doug Jones’ performance, and not his own voice,         
which ultimately brought the character of Abe Sapien to life). He provided             
the voice for Drix, a cold pill in the animated comedy Osmosis Jones. In a             
deliberate in-joke, he has also voiced Sideshow Bob's brother, Cecil, in an           
episode of The Simpsons, "Brother from Another Series", in which he and Grammer       
essentially recreated the Niles/Frasier relationship (at one point, Cecil             
mistakes Bart for Maris, the unseen wife of Niles on Frasier). He once again           
returned as Cecil in the Series 19 episode Funeral for a Fiend. (Funeral for a         
Fiend was, in fact, a minor Frasier reunion, as John Mahoney, who portrayed           
Martin Crane, the father of Frasier and Niles Crane, provided the voice of             
Sideshow Bob and Cecil's father in the episode.) In 2006, he co-starred in the         
animated pilot for The Amazing Screw-On Head as the Screw-On Head's arch-nemesis       
Emperor Zombie; however, the series was not picked up.                                 
                                                                                       
His commercial voiceover work includes voicing the Tassimo coffee system, an           
appropriate role as his trademark character Niles Crane was known for being an         
excessively fussy coffee connoisseur.                                                 
                                                                                       
On February 3rd 2008 reports speculated Pierce was in preliminary talks with           
Warner Brothers pictures over the possibility of playing Batman villain The           
Riddler in any future sequels to the movie series. These reports are, as of yet,       
uncomfirmed.