Christopher Lloyd
Christopher Lloyd | |
|---|---|
 Lloyd in October 2010 | |
| Born | Christopher Allen Lloyd October 22, 1938 |
| Occupation | Actor |
| Years active | 1952–present |
| Spouse(s) | Catherine Boyd (1959–1971) Kay Tornborg (1975–1987) Carol Ann Vanek (1988–1991) Jane Walker Wood (1992–present) |
Christopher Allen Lloyd (born October 22, 1938) is an American actor. He is best known for playing Doc Brown in the Back to the Future trilogy, Uncle Fester in The Addams Family films, and Judge Doom in Who Framed Roger Rabbit. He played Reverend Jim Ignatowski in the television series Taxi and most recently Mr. Goodman in Piranha 3D. He also starred in the short-lived television series Deadly Games, and also was a regular in the short-lived TV series Stacked, in the mid-2000s.
Lloyd has used his vocal talents in animation, frequently voicing villains. He currently voices the character Hacker on the animated PBS series Cyberchase. Lloyd has won three Primetime Emmy Awards and an Independent Spirit Award, and has been nominated for two Saturn Awards and a Daytime Emmy Award.
Early life
Lloyd was born in Stamford, Connecticut, the son of Samuel R. Lloyd, a lawyer, and his wife Ruth (née Lapham), a singer and sister of San Francisco mayor Roger Lapham.[1] His maternal grandfather, Lewis Lapham, was one of the founders of the Texaco oil company, and Lloyd is also a descendant of Mayflower passenger John Howland. Lloyd attended the Fessenden School, a preparatory school in Newton, Massachusetts. Lloyd was raised in New Canaan, Connecticut and Westport, Connecticut, where he graduated from Staples High School in 1958.
His mother, an heiress to the Lapham-Texaco oil fortune, donated her family's ancestral home, Waveny Park, to the town of New Canaan.
Career
He began acting by age 14 and started apprenticing in summer stock. He took acting classes in New York City at age 19, some at the Neighborhood Playhouse with Sanford Meisner. He appeared in several Broadway productions, including Happy End, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Red, White and Maddox, Kaspar, The Harlot and the Hunted, The Seagull, Total Eclipse, Macbeth, In the Boom Boom Room, Cracks, Professional Resident Company, What Every Woman Knows, And They Put Handcuffs on the Flowers, The Father, King Lear, and Power Failure.
His first major motion picture role was as a psychiatric patient in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. Prior to this, he appeared uncredited in the 1970 film Airport.[2] However, he may be most remembered for his roles as Reverend Jim Ignatowski, the ex-hippie cabbie on the TV sitcom Taxi, and the eccentric inventor Emmett "Doc" Brown in the Back to the Future trilogy of science fiction films, for which he was nominated for a Saturn Award. He portrayed the villain Maj. Bartholomew 'Butch' Cavendish in The Legend of the Lone Ranger a role he has played numerous times in various spin-offs and incarnations. He also played notable roles as Klingon Commander Kruge in Star Trek III: The Search for Spock, Professor Plum in "Clue", Professor Dimple in an episode of Road to Avonlea, the title role in The Pagemaster, the villain Judge Doom in Disney/Amblin's Who Framed Roger Rabbit, a wacky sound effects man named Zoltan in Radioland Murders, and Uncle Fester in the big screen adaptations of The Addams Family. In 1999 Lloyd was reunited onscreen with Michael J. Fox in an episode of Spin City titled "Back to the Future IV — Judgment Day" where Lloyd plays Owen Kingston, Mike Flaherty's (Fox's character) former mentor who stops by City Hall to see him, only to proclaim himself as God. That same year, he starred in the movie remake of the 1960s series My Favorite Martian. Also in November 2007, Lloyd was reunited onscreen with his former Taxi co-star Judd Hirsch in the (Season 4 episode) "Graphic"[3] of the TV series Numb3rs.
Lloyd also acted as the star in the point-and-click adventure game Toonstruck, which released in November 1996.
He played Ebenezer Scrooge in a 2008 production of A Christmas Carol at the Kodak Theatre with John Goodman and Jane Leeves. In 2009, he appeared in a trailer for a fake horror film, entitled Gobstopper, where he played Willy Wonka as a horror movie villain.[4]
In October 2009, he did a two-man show with comedy upcomer Joe Gallois in several Midwest cities.
In September 2010, it was announced that he will reprise his role as Doctor Emmett Brown in Back to the Future: The Game, an episodic adventure game series being developed by Telltale Games.[5][6]
In the summer of 2010, he starred as Willy Loman in a Weston Playhouse production of Death of a Salesman.[7]
On its January 21, 2011 episode, he appeared in the J.J. Abrams television series Fringe.[8]
Personal life
Lloyd seldom appears in public or gives interviews. Some of his best friends, co-stars and fans who have met him describe Lloyd as a very shy and quiet man. Lloyd had been married four times and his current wife is Jane Walker Wood, but he has never had children. His nephew, Sam Lloyd, is best known for playing Ted Buckland, the lawyer on Scrubs. Lloyd's home was destroyed in the Tea Fire of November 2008 in Montecito, California.
At a Q&A session at a Back to the Future trilogy showing in Hollywood in the summer of 2009, Lloyd was asked which of the Back to the Future films was his favorite. He responded "the third one, because for one thing it's a Western and I'm a fan of those, and second, it had a love story. I had always wanted to be in a love story and here I got a chance to be at the center of one". Nearly a year later on May 1, 2010, he appeared at the Tampa Theatre during a screening of Back to the Future, where he participated in another Q&A.[9]
Filmography
Awards
- (1982) Won - Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series / Taxi
- (1983) Won - Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series / Taxi
- (1992) Won - Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series / Road to Avonlea
- (1986) Nominated - Best Supporting Actor / Back to the Future
- (1990) Nominated - Best Supporting Actor / Who Framed Roger Rabbit
- (1994) Won - Best Supporting Male / Twenty Bucks
- (2001) Nominated - Best Actor / When Good Ghouls Go Bad
- (2008) Nominated - Outstanding Performer in an Animated Program / Cyberchase
- (1973) Won - Drama Desk Award for Best Performance / Kaspar
Further reading
- Chelsea on the Edge: The Adventures of an American Theater, Davi Napoleon. Includes discussion of Lloyd's early work off-Broadway, including the production of Happy End at the Chelsea Theater Center and on Broadway, Kaspar, and Total Eclipse. Iowa State University Press. ISBN-0-8138-1713-7, 1991.
References
- ^ "Lloyd genealogy". Freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com. Retrieved 2009-10-17.
- ^ Christopher Lloyd at IMDb
- ^ "Graphic" at IMDb
- ^ "Gobstopper The Movie". Gobstopper The Movie. Retrieved 2009-10-17.
- ^ Meghan Watt. "Back to the Future video games to include the voice of Christopher Lloyd".
- ^ Snider, Mike (2010-09-01). "Telltale Games times 'Back to the Future' project". USA Today. Retrieved 2010-09-01.
- ^ "Christopher Lloyd stars in 'Death of a Salesman'". NYTimes.com. Retrieved 2010-09-08.
- ^ Tucker, Ken (2011-01-21). "The return of 'Fringe' recap: 'The Firefly' glowed with love, loss, and Christopher Lloyd". Entertainment Weekly. Retrieved 2011-01-25.
- ^ "'Doc Brown' is in Tampa Bay? Whoa, that's heavy: Christopher Lloyd hitting sci-fi and movie fests".
- ^ "The Big Time (TV 2002)". Retrieved Nov. 5, 2010.
{{cite web}}: Check date values in:|accessdate=(help) - ^ "Could The Wizard of Oz 2 Be The Most Demented Film Of 2010?".
External links
- Christopher Lloyd at IMDb
- Christopher Lloyd at the Internet Broadway Database
- Please use a more specific IOBDB template. See the template documentation for available templates.
- Christopher Lloyd at AllMovie
- Christopher Lloyd at Memory Alpha
- 1938 births
- American film actors
- American television actors
- American voice actors
- American people of English descent
- Actors from Connecticut
- Darrow School alumni
- Independent Spirit Award winners
- Living people
- Neighborhood Playhouse School of the Theatre alumni
- People from Stamford, Connecticut
- Writers Guild of America Award winners