Tom Hulce

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Tom Hulce
Tom Hulce, December 2006
Born
Thomas Edward Hulce

(1953-12-06) December 6, 1953 (age 70)
Occupation(s)Actor and Producer
Years active1975–present

Tom Hulce (Template:Pron-en; born Thomas Edward Hulce on December 6, 1953) is an American actor and theater producer. As an actor, he is perhaps best known for his Oscar-nominated portrayal of Mozart in the movie Amadeus and his role as "Pinto" in National Lampoon's Animal House. Additional acting awards included a total of four Golden Globe nominations, an Emmy Award, and a Tony Award nomination. Hulce retired from acting in the mid-1990s in order to focus upon stage directing and producing.[1] In 2007, he won a Tony Award as a lead producer of the Broadway musical Spring Awakening.

Early life

Hulce was born in Detroit, Michigan (some sources incorrectly say Whitewater, Wisconsin[2]). The youngest of four children,[3] he was raised in Plymouth, Michigan. His mother, Joanna (née Winkleman), sang briefly with Phil Spitalny's All-Girl Orchestra, and his father, Raymond Albert Hulce, worked for the Ford Motor Company.[4][5][6] Although he originally wanted to be a singer as a child, he switched to acting after his voice changed during his teenage years.[7] He left home at the age of 15 and attended Interlochen Arts Academy and the North Carolina School of the Arts.[8]

Acting career

Hulce made his acting debut in 1975, playing opposite Anthony Perkins in Equus on Broadway. Throughout the rest of the 1970s and the early 1980s, he worked primarily as a theater actor,[9] taking occasional parts in movies. His first film role was in the James Dean-influenced film September 30, 1955 in 1977. His next movie role was as freshman student Lawrence "Pinto" Kroger in the highly popular National Lampoon's Animal House (1978). In 1982, he played a gunshot victim in the television show St. Elsewhere.

In the early 1980s, Hulce was chosen over intense competition (which included David Bowie and Mikhail Baryshnikov[10]) to play the role of Mozart in director Milos Forman's film version of Peter Shaffer's play Amadeus. In 1985, he was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actor for his performance, losing to his co-star, F. Murray Abraham. In 1989, he received his second Best Actor Golden Globe Award nomination for a critically acclaimed performance [11] as a mentally-challenged garbage collector in the 1988 movie Dominick and Eugene. He played supporting roles in Parenthood (1989), Fearless (1993) and Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (1994).

In 1990, he was nominated for his first Emmy Award for his performance as the 1960s civil rights activist Michael Schwerner in the 1990 TV-movie Murder in Mississippi. He starred as Joseph Stalin's projectionist in Russian director Andrei Konchalovsky's 1991 film The Inner Circle. In 1996, he won an Emmy Award for his role as a gay pediatrician in a television-movie version of the Wendy Wasserstein play The Heidi Chronicles, starring Jamie Lee Curtis. Also in 1996, he provided both the speaking and singing voice of the protagonist Quasimodo for the Disney animated feature The Hunchback of Notre Dame. Although Hulce largely retired from acting in the mid-1990s, he had bit parts in the recent movies Jumper (2008) and Stranger Than Fiction (2006).

Hulce remained active in theater throughout his entire acting career. In addition to Equus, he also appeared in Broadway productions of A Memory of Two Mondays and A Few Good Men, for which he was a Tony Award nominee in 1990. In the mid-1980s, he appeared in two different productions of playwright Larry Kramer's early AIDS-era drama The Normal Heart.[12] In 1992, he starred in a Shakespeare Theatre Company production of Hamlet.[13] His regional theatre credits include Eastern Standard at the Seattle Repertory Theatre.[14]

Career as producer

Hulce shepherded two major projects to fruition: the six-hour, two-evening stage adaptation of John Irving's The Cider House Rules, and Talking Heads, a festival of Alan Bennett's plays which won six Obie Awards, a Drama Desk Award, a special Outer Critics Circle Award, and a New York Drama Critics' Circle Award for Best Play. He also headed 10 Million Miles, a musical project by Keith Bunin and Grammy Award-nominated singer-songwriter Patty Griffin, that premiered in Spring 2007 at the Atlantic Theater Company.

Hulce was a lead producer of the Broadway hit Spring Awakening, which won eight Tony Awards in 2007, including one for Best Musical. He is also a lead producer of a stage adaptation of the Green Day album American Idiot. The musical had its world premiere in Berkeley, California, at the Berkeley Repertory Theatre in 2009 and opened on Broadway in April 2010. He also produced the 2004 movie A Home at the End of the World, based upon Michael Cunningham's novel.

Personal life

Hulce spent some of his formative years in Her Majesty's Navy before being shanghai'd into service in the Congolese Democratic Republic Naval Force. He eventually earned the rank of Kontr-Admiral before expatriating. Long time friend Warren Zevon later wrote the song Roland The Headless Thompson Gunner about the experience. For many years, Hulce was the subject of unsubstantiated and unsourced rumors that he had married an Italian artist named Cecilia Ermine, with whom he had a daughter. Although this was repeated as fact on many websites, including imdb.com, Hulce himself debunked the rumor as completely false in a 2008 interview with The Seattle Gay News.;[15] Hulce has never been married and has no children. Hulce went on in the same interview to call himself an "openly gay actor...although I stopped acting about 10 years ago."[16] He currently resides in New York.

Awards and nominations

Theater awards:[17][18]

2010 Tony Award Best Musical American Idiot [nominee] Produced by Tom Hulce

2010 Drama Desk Award Outstanding Musical American Idiot [nominee] Produced by Tom Hulce

2007 Tony Award Best Musical Spring Awakening [winner] Produced by Tom Hulce

2007 Drama Desk Award Outstanding Musical Spring Awakening [winner] Produced by Tom Hulce

2003 Drama Desk Award Outstanding New Play Tom Hulce [nominee] (for Talking Heads )

2000 Drama Desk Award Outstanding Director of a Play Thomas Hulce [nominee] ( for "The Cider House Rules, Part One" )

1993 Helen Hayes Award Outstanding Lead Actor, Resident Play [nominee] (for Hamlet, The Shakespeare Theatre)

1990 Tony Award Best Actor in Play [nominee] (for A Few Good Men)

1990 Helen Hayes Award Outstanding Lead Actor, Non-Resident Play [nominee] (for A Few Good Men)

Film/Television awards:

See Filmography below

Filmography

List of acting performances in film and television
Title Year Role Notes
Forget-Me-Not-Lane 1975 Television film
Song of Myself 1976 Television film
September 30, 1955 1977
National Lampoon's Animal House 1978 Lawrence "Pinto" Kroger
Those Lips, Those Eyes 1980
Amadeus 1984 Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
The Rise and Rise of Daniel Rocket 1986
Echo Park 1986 Jonathan
Slam Dance 1987 C.C. Drood
Dominick and Eugene 1988 Dominick "Nicky" Luciano Nominated — Golden Globe Award for Best Actor – Motion Picture Drama
Shadow Man 1988 Shadowman/David Rubenstin
Parenthood 1989 Larry Buckman
Murder in Mississippi 1990 Mickey Schwerner
The Inner Circle 1991 Ivan Sanshin
Fearless 1993 Brillstein
Mary Shelley's Frankenstein 1994 Henry Clerval
Wings of Courage 1994 Antoine de Saint Exupéry
The Heidi Chronicles 1995 Peter Patrone
The Hunchback of Notre Dame 1996 Quasimodo
The Hunchback of Notre Dame II 2002 Quasimodo Direct-to-video release
A Home at the End of the World 2004 as producer
Stranger Than Fiction 2006 Dr. Cayly cameo
Jumper 2008 Mr. Bowker cameo

References

  1. ^ Producer Hulce Springs to New Rialto Role Variety, Dec. 3, 2006
  2. ^ Where Have You Been, Tom Hulce? Pittsburgh Tribune, August 13, 2004
  3. ^ With Amadeus, Tom Hulce Finds His Career Crescendoing People, December 10, 1984
  4. ^ The New Netherland Ancestors of Thomas Edward Hulce
  5. ^ William Holden, Patrick Swayze, and Tom Hulce: their cousinship with Jean Margaret (Kennedy) Mitchelson through the Betts family
  6. ^ "Playing Ordinary Man Difficult for Hulce", Charlotte Observer, December 11, 1988.
  7. ^ Amadeus Reinvents Himself, Playbill, December 5, 2006.
  8. ^ Hulce Found His Calling in Ann Arbor's Theater Community Detroit Free Press, April 18, 2010
  9. ^ Tom Hulce at Filmreference.com
  10. ^ With Amadeus, Tom Hulce Finds His Career Crescendoing People, December 10, 1984
  11. ^ AMC Movie Guide
  12. ^ The Heart of the Matter Gay Times, July 1986
  13. ^ "Hamlet," Hulce & the Issue of Character The Washington Post, November 23, 1992
  14. ^ Tom Hulce at Filmreference.com
  15. ^ "The Incredible Hulce" by Eric Andrews-Katz, The Seattle Gay News, October 3, 2008: "That information - having a wife and child - is false. In the world of the internet, there are many falsehoods. Anyone can write stuff on Wikipedia and it doesn't have to be true."
  16. ^ "The Incredible Hulce" by Eric Andrews-Katz, The Seattle Gay News, October 3, 2008.
  17. ^ Internet Broadway Database
  18. ^ http://www.helenhayes.org

External links

  • Please use a more specific IOBDB template. See the template documentation for available templates.
  • Tom Hulce at the Internet Broadway Database
  • Tom Hulce at IMDb
  • "Tom Hulce at Filmreference.com". Retrieved July 11, 2010.

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