BRUCE DERN Biography - Actors and Actresses

 
 

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BRUCE DERN

Name: Bruce MacLeish Dern                                                         
Born: 4 June 1936 Chicago, Illinois, U.S.                                         
                                                                                   
Bruce MacLeish Dern (born June 4, 1936) is an Academy Award-nominated American     
screen actor.                                                                     
                                                                                   
Dern was born in Chicago, Illinois, the son of Jean (née MacLeish) and John Dern. 
His paternal grandfather was George Dern, a former Utah governor and Secretary     
of War, and his uncle was poet Archibald MacLeish. His godfather was well-known   
politician Adlai Stevenson and his godmother was Eleanor Roosevelt. Dern is the   
father of actress Laura Dern and was formerly married to actress Diane Ladd.       
                                                                                   
One of Dern's first film roles was in the Sydney Pollack picture They Shoot       
Horses, Don't They? in 1969. He played the enemy and killer of John Wayne's       
character in The Cowboys, and starred along with Jack Nicholson in The King of     
Marvin Gardens. Dern is generally regarded as a character actor. He has a         
reputation of playing unstable and villainous characters, although his best-known 
role may be that of Freeman Lowell, the caretaker of Earth's last forests in       
Silent Running (1972). Other memorable roles include Tom Buchanan in Robert       
Redford's The Great Gatsby; a brainwashed blimp pilot who launches a terrorist     
attack at the Super Bowl in 1977's Black Sunday and Capt. Bob Hyde in 1978's       
Coming Home, for which he received an Academy Award nomination for Best           
Supporting Actor.                                                                 
                                                                                   
His most recent effort is the independent movie The Astronaut Farmer and a         
recurring role on HBO's series Big Love.