Early life

Strathairn was born in San Francisco, California, the second of three children of Mary Frances (née Frazier), a nurse, and Thomas Scott Strathairn, Jr., a physician. He is of Scottish descent through his paternal grandfather, Thomas Scott Strathairn, a native of Crieff, and of Native Hawaiian ancestry through his paternal grandmother, Josephine Lei Victoria Alana. Strathairn attended Redwood High School in Larkspur, California, and graduated from Williams College in Williamstown, Massachusetts, in 1970.

He studied clowning at the Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Clown College in Venice, Florida, and briefly worked as a clown in a traveling circus.

Career

Strathairn was nominated for an Academy Award for his starring portrayal of CBS newsman Edward R. Murrow in the 2005 biopic Good Night, and Good Luck. The film explored Murrow's clash with Senator Joseph McCarthy over McCarthy's Communist "witch-hunt" in the 1950s. Strathairn also received Best Actor Golden Globe and Screen Actors Guild (SAG) nominations for his performance. In 2010, he won the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Miniseries or Movie for his portrayal of Dr. Carlock in the HBO television film Temple Grandin. For that role he also won the Satellite Award for Best Supporting Actor in a Series, Miniseries or Television Film and was nominated for a Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actor in a Series, Miniseries or Television Film.

Other notable film roles include his portrayals of the title character in Harrison's Flowers (2000); Col. Craig Harrington "Memphis Belle" 1990, the wisecracking blind techie in Sneakers (1992); general manager Ira Lowenstein in A League of Their Own; Joe St. George in Dolores Claiborne (1995); Pierce Patchett, a millionaire involved in the seedy side of 1950s Los Angeles in L.A. Confidential (1997) ; Theseus, Duke of Athens, in the 1999 version of A Midsummer Night's Dream; and baseball player Eddie Cicotte in Eight Men Out (1988).

Strathairn is a character actor, appearing in supporting roles in many independent and Hollywood films. In this capacity, he has co-starred in Twisted as a psychiatrist; in The River Wild as a husband; as a jailbird brother in The Firm.

He has worked with his Williams College classmate and director John Sayles. He made his film debut in Return of the Secaucus 7, and worked in the films Passion Fish, Matewan, Limbo and City of Hope, for which he won the Independent Spirit Award. Alongside Sayles, he played one of the "men in black" in the 1983 film The Brother from Another Planet. 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.

His television work includes a range of roles: Moss, the bookselling nebbish on the critically acclaimed The Days and Nights of Molly Dodd; Captain Keller, the father of Helen Keller in the 2000 remake of The Miracle Worker; Capt. Frederick Benteen, a U.S. 7th Cavalry officer under General Custer's command in Son of the Morning Star; and a far-out (both figuratively and literally) televangelist in Paradise, the pilot episode for a TV series on Showtime that was not successful. Strathairn had a recurring role on the hit television drama The Sopranos. Strathairn starred in the second season episode, "Out Where the Buses Don't Run", in Miami Vice.

Strathairn was in 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 Cold Souls, starring Paul Giamatti as a fictionalised version of himself, who enlists a company's services to deep freeze his soul, directed by Sophie Barthes. In 2006 he did a campaign ad for then congressional candidate (now, Senator) Kirsten Gillibrand. He reprised his role as Edward R. Murrow in a speech similar to the one from Good Night, and Good Luck, but was altered to reference Gillibrand's opponent John Sweeney.

Strathairn plays the lead role in the 2007 independent film, Steel Toes, a film by David Gow (writer/co-director/producer) and Mark Adam (co-director/DOP/editor). The film is based on Gow's stage play Cherry Docs, in which Strathairn starred for its American premiere at the Wilma Theatre in Philadelphia.

He played a role in the summer 2007 film The Bourne Ultimatum and appeared in Paramount Pictures' children's film The Spiderwick Chronicles (2008) as Arthur Spiderwick. Strathairn appeared in the American Experience PBS anthology series documentary, The Trials of J. Robert Oppenheimer, a biography of the physicist. He first played Oppenheimer in the 1989 CBS TV movie Day One. He plays William Flynn, an FBI agent dealing with anarchism in 1920s New York City, in No God, No Master.

In 2009, Strathairn performed in The People Speak, a documentary feature film that uses dramatic and musical performances of the letters, diaries, and speeches of everyday Americans. It was adapted from the historian Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States.

He starred as Dr. Lee Rosen on Syfy's series Alphas.

Theatre

Strathairn is also a stage actor and has performed over 30 theatrical roles. He performed several roles in stage plays by Harold Pinter. He played Stanley in two consecutive New York Classic Stage Company (CSC) productions of Pinter's 1957 play The Birthday Party, directed by Carey Perloff (since 1992 artistic director of the American Conservatory Theatre), in 1988 and 1989; the dual roles of prison Officer and Prisoner in Pinter's 1989 play Mountain Language (in a double bill with the second CSC Rep production of The Birthday Party); Edwin Booth in a workshop production by W. Stuart McDowell at The Players in 1989; Kerner, in Tom Stoppard's Hapgood (1994); and Devlin, opposite Lindsay Duncan's Rebecca, in Pinter's 1996 two-hander Ashes to Ashes in the 1999 New York premiere by the Roundabout Theatre Company.

Strathairn narrated a biographical video to introduce Barack Obama before his acceptance speech at the 2008 Democratic National Convention.

He is married to Logan Goodman, a nurse. They have two sons and live near Poughkeepsie, New York. He serves on the Rosendale Theatre Collective's Board of Advisors.

Filmography

Film

Year	Title	Role	Notes
1980	Return of the Secaucus 7	Ron Desjardins
1983	Lovesick	Marvin Zuckerman
1983	Silkwood	Wesley
1984	Iceman	Dr. Singe
1984	The Brother from Another Planet	Man In Black
1985	When Nature Calls	Weejun
1986	At Close Range	Tony Pine
1987	Matewan	Police Chief Sid Hatfield
1988	Stars and Bars	Charlie
1988	Call Me	Sam
1988	Eight Men Out	Eddie Cicotte
1988	Dominick and Eugene	Martin
1989	The Feud	The Stranger
1990	Memphis Belle	Col. Craig Harriman
1991	City of Hope	Asteroid	Independent Spirit Award for Best Supporting Male
1992	Big Girls Don't Cry... They Get Even	Keith
1992	A League of Their Own	Ira Lowenstein
1992	Bob Roberts	Mack Laflin
1992	Sneakers	Erwin 'Whistler' Emory
1992	Passion Fish	Rennie	Nominated - Independent Spirit Award for Best Supporting Male
1993	Lost in Yonkers	Johnny
1993	The Firm	Ray McDeere
1993	A Dangerous Woman	Getso
1994	The River Wild	Tom Hartman
1995	Losing Isaiah	Charles Lewin
1995	Dolores Claiborne	Joe St. George
1995	Home for the Holidays	Russell Terziak
1996	Mother Night	Lieutenant Bernard B. O'Hare
1997	Song of Hiawatha	Marcel
1997	L.A. Confidential	Pierce Morehouse Patchett	Nominated - Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture
1997	Bad Manners	Wes
1998	The Climb	Earl Himes
1998	With Friends Like These...	Armand Minetti
1998	Simon Birch	Reverend Russell
1998	Meschugge	Charles Kaminski
1999	A Midsummer Night's Dream	Theseus
1999	Limbo	"Jumpin Joe" Gastineau	Nominated - Independent Spirit Award for Best Male Lead
1999	A Map of the World	Howard Goodwin
2000	A Good Baby	Truman Lester
2000	Harrison's Flowers	Harrison Lloyd
2001	Relative Evil	Dr. Charlie	a.k.a. Ball in the House
2002	Speakeasy	Bruce Hickman
2002	Blue Car	Auster
2004	Twisted	Dr. Melvin Frank
2005	The Notorious Bettie Page	Estes Kefauver
2005	Missing in America	Henry
2005	Good Night, and Good Luck	Edward R. Murrow	Gransito Movie Award for Best Actor Volpi Cup for Best Actor Women Film Critics Circle Award for Best Actor Nominated - Academy Award for Best Actor Nominated - BAFTA Award for Best Actor in a Leading Role Nominated - Broadcast Film Critics Association Award for Best Actor Nominated - Broadcast Film Critics Association Award for Best Cast Nominated - Chicago Film Critics Association Award for Best Actor Nominated - Golden Globe Award for Best Actor - Motion Picture Drama Nominated - Independent Spirit Award for Best Male Lead Nominated - Satellite Award for Best Actor - Motion Picture Drama Nominated - Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture Nominated - Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Leading Role
2006	The Shovel	Paul Mullin	Short film
2006	Heavens Fall	Judge James Horton
2006	We Are Marshall	Donald Dedmon
2007	The Sensation of Sight	Finn	Also producer
2007	Steel Toes	Danny Dunckelman
2007	Fracture	DA Joe Lobruto
2007	Racing Daylight	Henry Becker/Harry Stokes
2007	The Bourne Ultimatum	Noah Vosen
2007	My Blueberry Nights	Arnie Copeland
2007	Matters of Life and Death	Mr. Jennings
2007	Trumbo	Readings
2008	The Spiderwick Chronicles	Arthur Spiderwick
2009	The Uninvited	Steven
2009	Cold Souls	Dr. Flintstein
2009	The People Speak	Himself	Documentary
2009	Odysseus in America	Narration
2010	Howl	Ralph McIntosh
2010	The Tempest	Alonzo, King of Naples
2010	The Whistleblower	Peter Ward
2012	The Bourne Legacy	Noah Vosen
2012	No God, No Master	William J. Flynn
2012	Lincoln	William Seward	Nominated - Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture
2014	Godzilla	Adm. Stenz
2015	The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel	Ty Burley
2015	Louder Than Bombs	Richard
2015	The Gettysburg Address	Ralph Waldo Emerson (voice)	Documentary; post-production
2016	November Criminals	Theo Schacht	Post-production
2016	American Pastoral		Filming

Television

Year	Title	Role	Notes
1985	Miami Vice	Marty Lang	Episode: "Out Where the Buses Don't Run"
1987	Broken Vows	Stuart Chase	Television movie
1988	The Equalizer	Phillip Borchek	Episode: "Sea of Fire"
1988-1991	The Days and Nights of Molly Dodd	Moss Goodman	20 episodes
1989	Wiseguy	Matthew Stemkowsky	4 episodes
1989	Day One	J. Robert Oppenheimer	Television movie
1990	Heat Wave	Bill Thomas	Television movie
1990	Judgment	Father Frank Aubert	Television movie
1991	Son of the Morning Star	Capt. Frederick W. Benteen	Television movie
1991	Without Warning: The James Brady Story	Doctor Art Kobrine	Television movie
1992	O Pioneers!	Carl Linstrum	Television movie
1994	April One	John McCowan	Television movie
1996	Beyond the Call	Russell Cates	Television movie
1997	In the Gloaming	Martin	Television movie Nominated - CableACE Award for Guest Actor in a Dramatic Special or Series
1998	Evidence of Blood	Jackson Kinley	Television movie
2000	Freedom Song	Peter Crowley	Television film
2000	The Miracle Worker	Captain Keller	Television film
2001	Big Apple	FBI Agent Will Preecher	8 episodes
2002	Lathe of Heaven	Mannie	Television movie
2002	Master Spy: The Robert Hanssen Story	Jack Hoschouer	Television movie
2004	The Sopranos	Robert Wegler	3 episodes
2004	Paradise	Reverend Bobby Paradise	Television movie
2008	Monk	Patrick Kloster	Episode: "Mr. Monk and the Genius"
2010	Temple Grandin	Dr. Carlock	Television movie Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Miniseries or a Movie Satellite Award for Best Supporting Actor - Series, Miniseries or Television Film Nominated - Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actor - Series, Miniseries or Television Film
2010	House	Nash	Episode: "Lockdown"
2011-2012	Alphas	Dr. Lee Rosen	24 episodes
2012	Hemingway & Gellhorn	John Dos Passos	Television movie Nominated - Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Miniseries or a Movie
2015-2016	The Blacklist	Peter Kotsiopulos (aka The Director)	13 episodes
2015	Axe Cop	Extincter (voice)	Episode: "Night Mission: The Extincter"

[ Source: Wikipedia ]