William Louis Petersen
William Louis Petersen (born February 21, 1953) is a Golden Globe and Emmy nominated American actor and producer, best known for playing Dr. Gilbert “Gil” Grissom on the hit CBS series CSI: Crime Scene Investigation. He played President John F Kennedy in the 1998 TV film The Rat Pack.
Petersen, the youngest of six children, was born in Evanston, Illinois, to parents who worked in the furniture business. His father is Danish-American, and his mother is German-American. He graduated from Bishop Kelly High School in Boise, Idaho, in 1972. He was accepted to Idaho State University on a football scholarship. While at Idaho State, Petersen took an acting course which changed the direction of his life. He left school along with his wife, Joanne, in 1974 and followed a drama professor to the Basque country where he studied as a Shakespearean actor. Petersen was interested in Basque culture and he studied the Basque language, Euskera, and gave his daughter the Basque name Maite (meaning love).
He is usually credited without his middle initial (i.e. credited as “William Petersen” and not “William L. Petersen”).
Petersen starred in the first Hannibal Lecter film, playing FBI agent Will Graham. Because his role in Michael Mann’s Manhunter was so emotionally exhausting, he did everything he could to rid himself of Graham after finishing principal photography. He shaved off his beard, cut his hair and dyed it blonde. He also claims to have done this because, while rehearsing for a play in Chicago, his dialogue was always coming out like Graham’s; he dyed his hair so he could look in the mirror and see a different person.
In a move perhaps indicative of his career choices, Petersen declined a part in Oliver Stone’s Platoon, as it would have kept him in the Philippines, away from his family. Instead, he worked on the 1987 HBO made-for-TV movie Long Gone as a minor league baseball player and manager.
He played a law enforcement officer in William Friedkin’s 1985 action film To Live and Die in L.A., Petersen appears frontally nude in it, briefly. He was offered the role of Henry Hill in the movie Goodfellas but turned it down
Petersen married longtime girlfriend Gina Cirone in June 2003. He has a daughter, Maite, from his previous marriage. (Maite gave birth to his grandson, Mazrik William, in October 2003.) Petersen is an avid Chicago Cubs fan, and will drop by Wrigley Field at least once a year to sing “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” during the seventh-inning stretch. In 2004, Petersen described to Playboy Magazine a near-death experience he had in the 1980s, which gave him assurance that there is an afterlife.
