Charles Martin Smith

Fuzzy-faced actor Charles Martin Smith took time off from his studies at Cal State to make his cinema debut in The Culpepper Cattle Company (1972). Specializing in nerdish, owl-eyed teenagers during the early stages of his career, Smith scored a hit as Terry "The Toad" Field in the two American Graffiti movies of the mid-1970s. He was afforded a rare star part as real-life Canadian author Farley Mowat in Never Cry Wolf (1983), delivering what amounted to a one-man show as he braved the treacherous Arctic to study the so-called predatory behavior of wolves. Other Smith performances worth noting include ill-fated FBI accountant Oscar Wallace in The Untouchables (1987) and AIDS researcher Henry Jaffe in the made-for-TV And the Band Played On. Turning director with the sloppy but endearing "horror musical" Trick or Treat (1986), Charles Martin Smith has gone on to man the megaphone on the love-'em-or-hate-'em comedies Boris and Natasha (1992) and Fifty/Fifty (1993).

~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide