Age: 70
Birthplace: Detroit, Michigan, U.S.
Thomas Edward "Tom" Hulce (/ˈhʊls/; born December 6, 1953) is an American movie actor and theater producer. As an actor, he is best known for his roles as "Pinto" in Animal House (1978), his Academy Award-nominated portrayal of Mozart in Amadeus (1984) and the voice of Quasimodo in Disney's The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1996). Additional acting awards included four Golden Globe nominations, an Emmy Award, and a Tony Award nomination. Hulce retired from acting in the mid-1990s to focus on stage directing and producing. In 2007, he won a Tony Award as a lead producer of the Broadway musical Spring Awakening.
Hulce was born in Detroit, Michigan (some sources incorrectly say Whitewater, Wisconsin). The youngest of four children, he was raised in Plymouth, Michigan. His mother, Joanna (née Winkleman), sang briefly with Phil Spitalny's All-Girl Orchestra, and his father, Raymond Albert Hulce, worked for the Ford Motor Company. As a child, he wanted to be a singer, but switched to acting after his voice changed in his teenage years. He left home at the age of 15 and attended Interlochen Arts Academy and the North Carolina School of the Arts.
Hulce made his acting debut in 1975, playing opposite Anthony Perkins in Equus on Broadway. Throughout the rest of the 1970s and the early 1980s, he worked primarily as a theater actor, taking occasional parts in movies. His first film role was in the James Dean-influenced film September 30, 1955 in 1977. His next movie role was as freshman student Lawrence "Pinto" Kroger in the classic comedy Animal House (1978). In 1983, he played a gunshot victim in the television show St. Elsewhere.
In the early 1980s, Hulce was chosen over intense competition (which included David Bowie and Mikhail Baryshnikov) to play the role of Mozart in director Miloš Forman's film version of Peter Shaffer's play Amadeus. In 1984, he was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actor for his performance, losing to his co-star, F. Murray Abraham. In 1989, he received his second Best Actor Golden Globe Award nomination for a critically acclaimed performance as an intellectually challenged garbage collector in the 1988 movie Dominick and Eugene. He played supporting roles in Parenthood (1989), Fearless (1993) and Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (1994). In 1988 he played the title part in the British-Dutch movie Shadow Man directed by the Polish director Piotr Andrejew.
In 1990, he was nominated for his first Emmy Award for his performance as the 1960s civil rights activist Michael Schwerner in the 1990 TV-movie Murder in Mississippi. He starred as Joseph Stalin's projectionist in Russian director Andrei Konchalovsky's 1991 film The Inner Circle. In 1996, he won an Emmy Award for his role as a pediatrician in a television-movie version of the Wendy Wasserstein play The Heidi Chronicles, starring Jamie Lee Curtis. Also that same year, he was casted in Disney's animated film adaptation of The Hunchback of Notre Dame, where he provided both the speaking and singing voice of the protagonist Quasimodo. Although Hulce largely retired from acting in the mid-1990s, he had bit parts in the recent movies Jumper (2008) and Stranger Than Fiction (2006).
Hulce remained active in theater throughout his entire acting career. In addition to Equus, he also appeared in Broadway productions of A Memory of Two Mondays and A Few Good Men, for which he was a Tony Award nominee in 1990. In the mid-1980s, he appeared in two different productions of playwright Larry Kramer's early AIDS-era drama The Normal Heart. In 1992, he starred in a Shakespeare Theatre Company production of Hamlet. His regional theatre credits include Eastern Standard at the Seattle Repertory Theatre and Nothing Sacred at the Mark Taper Forum, both in 1988.
Hulce produced two major projects: the six-hour, two-evening stage adaptation of John Irving's The Cider House Rules—and Talking Heads, a festival of Alan Bennett's plays that won six Obie Awards, a Drama Desk Award, a special Outer Critics Circle Award, and a New York Drama Critics' Circle Award for Best Play. He also headed 10 Million Miles, a musical project by Keith Bunin and Grammy Award-nominated singer-songwriter Patty Griffin, that premiered in Spring 2007 at the Atlantic Theater Company.
Hulce was a lead producer of the Broadway hit Spring Awakening, which won eight Tony Awards in 2007, including one for Best Musical. He is also a lead producer of a stage adaptation of the Green Day album American Idiot. The musical had its world premiere in Berkeley, California, at the Berkeley Repertory Theatre in 2009 and opened on Broadway in April 2010. He also produced the 2004 movie A Home at the End of the World, based upon Michael Cunningham's novel.
See Filmography below
Title | Year | Role | Notes |
---|---|---|---|
Forget-Me-Not-Lane | 1975 | Television film | |
Song of Myself | 1976 | Television film | |
September 30, 1955 | 1977 | ||
Animal House | 1978 | Lawrence "Larry" Kroger, aka "Pinto" | |
Those Lips, Those Eyes | 1980 | ||
Amadeus | 1984 | Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart |
|
Rise and Rise of Daniel Rocket, TheThe Rise and Rise of Daniel Rocket | 1986 | ||
Echo Park | 1986 | Jonathan | |
Slam Dance | 1987 | C.C. Drood | |
Dominick and Eugene | 1988 | Dominick "Nicky" Luciano | Nominated — Golden Globe Award for Best Actor - Motion Picture Drama |
Shadow Man | 1988 | Shadowman/David Rubenstin | |
Parenthood | 1989 | Larry Buckman | |
Murder in Mississippi | 1990 | Mickey Schwerner |
|
Inner Circle, TheThe Inner Circle | 1991 | Ivan Sanshin | |
Fearless | 1993 | Brillstein | |
Mary Shelley's Frankenstein | 1994 | Henry Clerval | |
Wings of Courage | 1994 | Antoine de Saint Exupéry | |
Heidi Chronicles, TheThe Heidi Chronicles | 1995 | Peter Patrone |
|
Hunchback of Notre Dame, TheThe Hunchback of Notre Dame | 1996 | Quasimodo | Voice |
Hunchback of Notre Dame II, TheThe Hunchback of Notre Dame II | 2002 | Quasimodo | Voice Direct-to-video release |
Home at the End of the World, AA Home at the End of the World | 2004 | as producer | |
Stranger Than Fiction | 2006 | Dr. Cayly | cameo |
Jumper | 2008 | Mr. Bowker | cameo |
The Seagull | 2016 | as producer |