Bruce Dern

Bruce MacLeish Dern, born on June 4, 1936, in Chicago, Illinois, is an American actor whose career has spanned stage, film, and television for more than six decades. He grew up in Kenilworth, Illinois, and comes from a distinguished family background: his paternal grandfather, George Dern, served as governor of Utah and as Secretary of War, while his maternal grandfather held a vice presidency at Carson, Pirie and Scott stores, a company founded by his own father, Scottish-born businessman Andrew MacLeish. Dern's maternal granduncles include poet Archibald MacLeish and Naval aviator Kenneth MacLeish, and his godfather was governor and two-time presidential nominee Adlai Stevenson II. At New Trier High School, Dern excelled as a track athlete and sought to qualify for the 1956 Olympic Trials. He subsequently attended the University of Pennsylvania, where he also ran track, before leaving after two years to pursue acting. He trained at the Actors Studio in New York City under Elia Kazan and Lee Strasberg.

Dern's stage career began in the late 1950s and extended through 1979. His Broadway credits include Strangers, Sweet Bird of Youth, and The Shadow of a Gunman. In the original Broadway production of Tennessee Williams' Sweet Bird of Youth, he appeared alongside Paul Newman and Geraldine Page. Prior to his Broadway work, he starred with Lyle Kessler in the Philadelphia premiere of Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot.

His film career gained momentum during the New Hollywood era of the late 1960s and 1970s. Early screen appearances included a sailor in flashback sequences in Alfred Hitchcock's Marnie (1964) and a murdered lover in Hush...Hush, Sweet Charlotte (1964). He took on a range of character roles in subsequent years, playing a murderous rustler in Hang 'Em High, an impoverished farmer in the adaptation of Horace McCoy's They Shoot Horses, Don't They? (1969), and a cattle thief who kills a rancher played by John Wayne in Mark Rydell's western The Cowboys (1972). That same year, he carried a leading role in the ecological science-fiction film Silent Running and co-starred with Jack Nicholson in The King of Marvin Gardens. In 1974, he portrayed Tom Buchanan in the film adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby, and in 1976 he appeared in Alfred Hitchcock's final film, Family Plot. John Frankenheimer's thriller Black Sunday (1977) cast Dern as a vengeful Vietnam War veteran and Goodyear Blimp pilot who plans a large-scale terrorist attack at the Super Bowl. His performance as a disturbed Vietnam veteran in Hal Ashby's Coming Home (1978) earned him a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. That same film, notably, both opens and closes with scenes of Dern running, reflecting a lifelong dedication to the sport: between the ages of 28 and 70, he ran between 2,500 and 4,000 miles per year.

In 1982, Dern won the Silver Bear for Best Actor at the 33rd Berlin International Film Festival for his work in Jason Miller's That Championship Season. He continued to take on varied roles in the following decades, including a Vietnam veteran and neighborhood survivalist in Joe Dante's The 'Burbs (1989), a local crime boss in Diggstown, a rival of Wild Bill Hickok in Walter Hill's Wild Bill, and George Spahn in Quentin Tarantino's Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (2019). Dern has collaborated repeatedly with several directors, among them Walter Hill across The Driver, Wild Bill, and Last Man Standing; Joe Dante across The 'Burbs, Small Soldiers, and The Hole; and Quentin Tarantino across Django Unchained, The Hateful Eight, and Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.

His performance in Alexander Payne's Nebraska (2013), in which he played a man who believes he has won a million dollars and travels by road from Billings, Montana to Lincoln, Nebraska to collect the prize, brought him the Best Actor Award at the 2013 Cannes Film Festival and a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Actor. He is also a BAFTA Award nominee, a two-time Genie Award nominee, and a three-time Golden Globe Award nominee. On television, Dern starred in the HBO series Big Love from 2006 to 2011.

In his personal life, Dern was married to Marie Dawn Pierce from 1957 to 1959, and subsequently to actress Diane Ladd beginning in 1960. The couple's first daughter died in 1962 from head injuries sustained after falling into a swimming pool. Their second daughter, Laura Dern, born in 1967, became an actress. Following his divorce from Ladd, Dern married Andrea Beckett in 1969. He published his autobiography, Things I've Said, But Probably Shouldn't Have: An Unrepentant Memoir, in 2007.