Samuel Waterston
Samuel Waterston (born November 15, 1940) is an American actor noted particularly for his portrayal of Jack McCoy on the NBC television series Law & Order. He has also appeared in many feature films.
Waterston, one of four siblings, was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts. His mother, Alice Tucker (née Atkinson), was an American Mayflower descendant and worked as a landscape painter, and his father, George Chychele Waterston, was an immigrant from Leith, Scotland and a semanticist and language teacher. Waterston attended both the Brooks School, a boarding school in North Andover, Massachusetts, and the Groton School. He entered Yale University on a scholarship in 1958 and graduated with a BA in 1962. After graduating from Yale, he attended the Clinton Playhouse for several months. Waterston also attended the Sorbonne in Paris and the American Actors Workshop.
An active humanitarian, Waterston donates considerable time to organizations such as Oceana, where he is a board member, Refugees International, Meals on Wheels, The United Way, and The Episcopal Actors’ Guild of America. Waterston, a practicing Episcopalian, narrated the 1999 biographical documentary of Episcopal civil rights martyr Jonathan Myrick Daniels, Here Am I, Send Me.
A political independent, he was a spokesman for the Unity08 movement, which unsuccessfully sought to run a non- or bipartisan presidential ticket in the 2008 presidential election. Waterston has stated that he was a Democrat until he left the party in disgust following the airing of Lyndon B. Johnson’s infamous “Daisy” election ad in 1964. Waterston has also appeared in print ads, and announced in television commercials, for the liberal magazine The Nation.
In 2002, Waterston and fellow Law & Order castmate Jerry Orbach were honored as “Living Landmarks” by the New York Landmarks Conservancy.
Waterston is a longtime friend and fan of the Mark Morris Dance Group and hosted the television presentation of Mozart Dances on PBS’ Live From Lincoln Center on August 16, 2007.
His son James Waterston is also an actor (his most famous role probably being that of Gerard Pitts in Peter Weir’s Dead Poets Society), as are his daughters Katherine and Elisabeth Waterston.
