Keir Dullea

MAIN

•

BIRTHDAY

May 30, 1936

Cleveland, OH

RECENT CREDITS

The Accidental Husband (FILM) Mar. 27, 2009

The Good Shepherd (FILM) Dec. 22, 2006

Movies That Shook the World (TV) Sep. 30, 2005

Law & Order: Special Victims Unit (TV) Apr. 5, 2002

Law & Order (TV) Jan. 10, 2001

View all Keir Dullea Credits

BIOGRAPHY

Expand Full Bio

Cleveland-born Keir Dullea found himself in the thick of Manhattan's intellectual scene when his parents took over the management of a Greenwich Village bookstore. Dullea attended Rutgers and San Francisco State, then launched his acting career in regional theater. He made a spectacular film debut in The Hoodlum Priest (1961), playing a born-to-hang juvenile delinquent. He was more sympathetic but no less emotionally disturbed in 1962's David and Lisa; as late as 1965, he was still playing mentally unstable youths in films like Bunny Lake is Missing. The biggest film hit with which Dullea was associated was 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) in which he played the time-and-space-travelling astronaut Bowman. He repeated this characterization (and answered several of the questions posed by 2001) in the 1984 sequel 2010. Though he'd been active on the New York stage in the 1950s, Keir Dullea did not appear on Broadway until 1970, when the 34-year-old actor portrayed a twentysomething blind man in Butterflies are Free.

~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Collapse Full Bio