David Strathairn
David Strathairn was born on January 26, 1949 in San Francisco, California, the son of a physician. He has Scottish ancestry through his paternal grandfather, Thomas Scott Strathairn (a native of Crieff, Perthshire), and Native Hawaiian ancestry through his paternal grandmother, Lei. Strathairn attended Redwood High School in Larkspur, California and graduated from Williams College in Williamstown, Massachusetts in 1970. He studied at the Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Clown College in Venice, Florida and briefly worked as a clown in a traveling circus.
He is married to Logan Goodman Strathairn, a nurse. They have two sons and live in the mid-Hudson Valley area of upstate New York, near Poughkeepsie. Their son Tay, an actor and musician who plays jazz piano, appeared in John Sayles’ films Eight Men Out (as Eddie Cicotte) and Lone Star (as Young Sam).
Strathairn was Academy Award-nominated for his portrayal of CBS newsman Edward R. Murrow in the biopic Good Night, and Good Luck, which explored Murrow’s clash with Senator Joseph McCarthy over McCarthy’s Communist “witch-hunt” in the 1950s. Strathairn received Best Actor Golden Globe, Screen Actors Guild (SAG), and Academy Award nominations for his performance. Other notable film roles include his portrayals of the title character in Harrison’s Flowers (2000); the wisecracking blind techie in Sneakers (1992); Joe St. George in Dolores Claiborne (1995); Theseus, Duke of Athens, in the 1999 version of A Midsummer Night’s Dream; and corrupt baseball player Eddie Cicotte in 1988’s Eight Men Out.
Strathairn is often regarded as a character actor, appearing in supporting roles in many independent and Hollywood films. In this capacity, he has co-starred in Twisted as Ashley Judd’s psychiatrist; in The River Wild as Meryl Streep’s husband; as Tom Cruise’s jailbird brother in The Firm; and as Kim Basinger’s pimp in L.A. Confidential.
He has worked frequently with his Williams College classmate and director John Sayles, beginning with his film debut in Return of the Secaucus 7, and including the films Passion Fish, Matewan, Limbo and City of Hope, for which Strathairn won the Independent Spirit Award. Alongside Sayles, he played one of the Men in Black in the 1983 film The Brother from Another Planet Several years later, Strathairn created the role of Edwin Booth with Maryann Plunkett in a workshop production of Booth! A House Divided, by W. Stuart McDowell, at the Players in New York City.
Among Strathairn’s recent films are: We Are…Marshall, a 2006 film about the rebirth of Marshall University’s football program after the 1970 plane crash that killed most of the team’s members; and Hereafter, set in the aftermath of the 2004 Sumatran tsunami, directed by Michael Patwin (in pre-production). In 2006 he did a campaign ad for then congressional candidate (now, senator-appointee) Kirsten Gillibrand. He reprised his role as Edward R. Murrow in a speech similar to the one given in the film Good Night, and Good Luck but altered to reference Gillibrand’s opponent John Sweeney.
