Chris O’Donnell is one of the leading actors of his generation whose talent covers the range from action and adventure to romance, drama and comedy.
O’Donnell made his motion picture debut with a critically acclaimed performance as Jessica Lange’s rebellious son in the Paul Brickman feature, Men Don’t Leave. He followed this role with a memorable cameo in Jon Avnet’s Academy Award nominated Fried Green Tomatoes.
In 1993, O’Donnell was nominated for a Golden Globe and won the Chicago Film Critics Award for his starring role opposite Al Pacino in the multiple Academy Award winner Scent of a Woman, directed by Martin Brest. He then played the swashbuckling D’Artagnan in The Three Musketeers, for which he was named the NATO/ShoWest Male Star of Tomorrow in 1994.
O’Donnell adopted an Irish dialect to star in the romantic comedy sleeper Circle of Friends and won over audiences worldwide with his stand-out performance as Robin in the highest grossing film of 1995, Batman Forever.
He went on to star in the dark legal thriller The Chamber and Lord Richard Attenborough’s period romance In Love and War before reprising his role as the daredevil acrobat and fledgling superhero in the 1997 hit Batman & Robin.
In 1999, he co-starred in Robert Altman’s critically acclaimed comedy Cookie’s Fortune with an impressive ensemble cast that included Glenn Close, Julianne Moore, Liv Tyler and Charles Dutton.
O’Donnell most recently starred in the romantic comedy The Bachelor opposite Renee Zellweger. The film was produced by his production company, George Street Pictures, in association with New Line.
Thirty-year-old O’Donnell and his wife Caroline had their first baby, Lily, while they were in New Zealand filming Vertical Limit. O’Donnell is from Chicago and studied marketing at Boston College. When not in Los Angeles, he also resides in Chicago.