DEAN STOCKWELL Biography - Actors and Actresses

 
 

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DEAN STOCKWELL

Name: Dean Stockwell                                                             
Birth name: Robert Dean Stockwell                                                 
Born: 5 March 1936 Hollywood, California, U.S.                                   
                                                                                 
Dean Stockwell (born March 5, 1936) is an Academy Award-nominated and Golden     
Globe-winning American film and television actor, active for over 60 years. He   
played Rear Admiral Albert "Al" Calavicci in the NBC television series Quantum   
Leap, and currently appears in the Sci Fi Channel revival of Battlestar           
Galactica as Brother Cavil.                                                       
                                                                                 
Stockwell began his acting career at age seven. Some of his notable child roles   
include that of Robert Shannon in The Green Years (1946), as well as playing     
Gregory Peck's son in Gentleman's Agreement (1947). He also starred in the lead   
role of the film The Boy With Green Hair in 1948, and in a film adaptation of     
The Secret Garden in 1949. Unlike many child actors, he continued to act past     
his teenage years. In 1945 he appeared in a main character role (Donald Martin)   
in the musical movie "Anchors Aweigh" alongside Frank Sinatra and Gene Kelly. In 
1950, he appeared in a lead role alongside Errol Flynn in Kim, the film of       
Rudyard Kipling's novel of the same name.                                         
                                                                                 
In 1959, Stockwell appeared in the film Compulsion, based on the famous case of   
Leopold and Loeb (with characters names changed to "Steiner and Strauss"),       
playing Judd Steiner. Compulsion also starred Bradford Dillman and Orson Welles   
as the Clarence Darrow-based lawyer Jonathan Wilk. In 1962, Stockwell appeared   
in an adaptation of Eugene O'Neill's play Long Day's Journey Into Night along     
with Katharine Hepburn, Ralph Richardson and Jason Robards. In 1965, his         
performance as an escaped convict who develops feelings for a 15-year-old girl   
in Rapture drew both praise and controversy. Nevertheless, his dynamic talent as 
a thespian was recognized.                                                       
                                                                                 
In 1973, Stockwell was the leading actor in a B-rated horror flick called The     
Werewolf of Washington. Dean played Jack Whittier, a reporter who had an affair   
with the daughter of the U.S. President and is sent to Hungary. There he is       
bitten by a werewolf, and then gets transferred back to Washington D.C., where   
he gets a job as Press Secretary to the President. Then bodies start turning up   
all over the city.                                                               
                                                                                 
In 1984, he appeared in Wim Wenders' critically acclaimed film Paris, Texas, and 
in that same year, in David Lynch's film version of Dune as the traitor Dr. Yueh. 
In 1986, Stockwell made a memorable appearance in another Lynch production, the   
controversial neo-noir classic thriller Blue Velvet. In 1988, he was nominated   
for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his performance as Mafia boss 
Tony "the Tiger" Russo in the comedy Married to the Mob.