John Shea

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John Shea
Born John Victor Shea III[1]
April 14, 1949 (1949-04-14) (age 62)
North Conway, New Hampshire, U.S.
Spouse Melissa MacLeod (2001-present)
Laura Pettibone (1971-2000)[1]

John Victor Shea III (born April 14, 1949) is an American actor and director who has starred on stage, television and in film. He is best known for his role as Lex Luthor in the 1990s TV series Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman and also starred in the short lived 1990s TV series WIOU as Hank Zaret. Later on in the 2000s he starred on the series Mutant X as Adam Kane.

Contents

[edit] Biography

[edit] Early life

Shea was born in North Conway, New Hampshire, near where his father was teaching at Fryeburg Academy, Maine, and raised in Springfield, Massachusetts in a family of five. His parents were Elizabeth Mary (née Fuller) and Dr. John Victor Shea, Jr.,[2] who served in the U.S. Army in World War II, fought in the Battle of the Bulge, and was a teacher, coach and later assistant Superintendent of Schools. Shea attended Catholic schools graduating from Cathedral High School where he captained the varsity debate team and played varsity football and track. Shea received his early theatre training at Bates College under Lavinia Schaffer and Bill Beard. He also performed on the varsity debating and football teams and co-edited the college literary magazine, Puffed Wheat, before graduating with a BA in 1970.[1] He studied acting and directing at the Yale School of Drama under Dean Robert Brustein, gaining an MFA in Directing in 1973.[1] During his time at the School of Drama, he also performed at the Yale Repertory Theatre, in the Yale cabaret with schoolmates Joe Grifasi and Meryl Streep, and studied film with Arthur Penn and Sidney Lumet at the Film School.

[edit] Stage and screen debuts

After a directing apprenticeship at both the Chelsea Theatre (under Robert Kalfin) and the Public Theatre (with Joseph Papp) he made his Broadway debut at the age of 26 in Kalfin's production of Isaac B. Singer's "Yentl" opposite Tovah Feldshuh, for which he received the Theatre World Award.

After guest starring roles in such TV series' as Eight Is Enough and Man from Atlantis, Shea made his television film debut playing Joseph in The Nativity (1978) opposite Madeleine Stowe, and his feature-film debut in Matthew Chapman's English film noir Hussy (1980) opposite Helen Mirren. His American film debut was in Costa-Gavras' Academy Award-winning Missing (1982) with Jack Lemmon and Sissy Spacek. Based on a true story, Shea played Charles Horman, an American journalist who was kidnapped, tortured, and executed by the Pinochet regime during the military coup that over threw the Allende government in Chile. The film also won the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival and helped launch Shea's international acting career.

[edit] Films

Since then he has starred in many films, including Windy City (opposite Kate Capshaw for which he won a "Best Actor" award at the Montreal Film Festival in 1984), Stealing Home, Lune de Miel (France; AKA Honeymoon shot in both French and English with French actress Nathalie Baye), Unsettled Land (Israel, 1987) with Kelly McGillis, A New Life with Alan Alda and Ann-Margaret, The Impossible Spy with Eli Wallach (winning a "Best Actor" Golden Panda Award in China); Freejack (1992); and Honey, I Blew Up the Kid.

Shea made his debut into Indian cinema with the 2009 Tamil drama Achchamundu! Achchamundu!, directed by Indo-American film director Arun Vaidyanathan, becoming the first American actor to work in a Tamil film.

[edit] Independent

Shea has also starred in a number of independent films, including The Adventures of Sebastian Cole (1998) and The Insurgents (2007) and "An Invisible Sign" (2011) and "The Trouble With the Truth" with Lea Thompson. In addition, he co-wrote and directed the independent film Southie (1998) starring Amanda Peet, Donnie Wahlberg, Rose McGowan, Anne Meara, Will Arnet, Jimmy Cummings and Lawrence Tierney. Southie won the Seattle International Film Festival award for Best Film, represented the United States at the Montreal International Festival, and was distributed by Lions Gate Films. He has served on the Board of Advisors of the Nantucket Film Festival since its inception, a festival dedicated to the art of screenwriting.

[edit] Stage work

Since his Broadway debut in "Yentl" Shea has continued to work in Off-Broadway and Broadway theatre productions, starring in Arthur Kopit's "End of the World" (directed by Hal Prince), Paula Vogel's "How I Learned to Drive", Anne Meara's "Down the Garden Paths", Eugene O'Neill's "Long Days Journey Into Night" for which he was nominated for the Joseph Jefferson Award, A.R. Gurney's"The Dining Room", Peter Parnell's "The Sorrows of Stephen", Bulgakov's "The Master and Margarita", Steven Poliakoff's "American Days" (for which he received a "Best Actor" nomination from the Drama Desk Awards), "Romeo and Juliet", Philip Barry's "The Animal Kingdom" (with Sigourney Weaver), Nancy Hasty's "The Director", and Israel Horowitz's "The Secret of Madame Bonnard's Bath" (in 2007). He is currently the Artistic Director of the Theatre Workshop of Nantucket where he has starred in David Harrower's play "Blackbird" and revival of "The Director"; Shea served an apprenticeship at this same theatre while a college student under the direction of an early mentor, Joseph "Mac" Dixon.

He made his Carnegie Hall debut playing "The Soldier" in Tom O'Horgan's production of Igor Stravinsky's "L'Histoire du Soldat". In 1986 he made his London West End debut starring in Larry Kramer's "The Normal Heart" at the Albery Theatre.

Shea is also a regular reader on Selected Shorts for Symphony Space, broadcast nationwide on Public Radio International. His sensitive reading of Truman Capote's A Christmas Memory won AudioFile Magazine's Earphones Award in 1999, as part of the anthology Selected Shorts: Classic Tales, Vol. XII.[3] For his work reading Ted Bell's international thriller "Assassin," Shea received an Audie Award-nomination as "Best Male Narrator." He has also performed Bell's other novels: "Hawke", "Spy", "Pirate", "Czar" and "Nick of Time", among other audio books.

[edit] Television

John Shea as Lex Luthor.

Besides his more high-profile starring roles in Lois & Clark and Mutant X, Shea's diverse television work includes guest-appearances on TV shows Sex and the City, Law & Order, and Law & Order: Criminal Intent as well as being a recurring character on Gossip Girl.

Among other television films he has been featured in Family Reunion (with Bette Davis), Small Sacrifices (opposite Farrah Fawcett) which won a Peabody Award, Kennedy (with Martin Sheen, in which he co-starred as Robert F. Kennedy) which won a BAFTA Award, A Will of Their Own with Lea Thompson, Hitler's S.S. (opposite Bill Nighy), Do You Know the Muffin Man? with Pam Dawber, Coast to Coast (with Lenny Henry and Pete Postlethwaite for the BBC) and an adaptation of A.R Gurney's playThe Dining Room for Great Performances. Shea received a Prime Time Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actor for his role in the mini-series Baby M opposite JoBeth Williams.

[edit] Personal life

John has been married twice. He and his first wife, the fine arts photographer Laura Pettibone, had one child together, Jake. He and his current wife, the artist Melissa MacLeod, a co-founder of the cooperative (X) Gallery on Nantucket, have two children, Miranda and Caiden.

[edit] Filmography

[edit] References

  1. ^ a b c d John Shea Biography at Hollywood.com. Accessed May 25, 2008
  2. ^ John Shea Biography (1949-)
  3. ^ AudioFile: Audiobook Reviews

[edit] External links


Preceded by
Sherman Howard
for Superboy		 Actors portraying
Lex Luthor
1993–1997
for Lois and Clark		 Succeeded by
Michael Rosenbaum
for Smallville

Scott Jacoby (1972) · Marlon Brando (1979) · George Grizzard (1980) · David Warner (1981) · Laurence Olivier (1982) · Richard Kiley (1983) · Art Carney (1984) · Karl Malden (1985) · John Malkovich (1986) · Dabney Coleman (1987) · John Shea (1988) · Derek Jacobi (1989) · Vincent Gardenia (1990) · James Earl Jones (1991) · Hume Cronyn (1992) · Beau Bridges (1993) · Michael A. Goorjian (1994) · Donald Sutherland (1995) · Tom Hulce (1996) · Beau Bridges (1997) · George C. Scott (1998) · Peter O'Toole (1999) · Hank Azaria (2000)
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=John_Shea&oldid=471471097"
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