Bruce McGill

Bruce Travis McGill, born July 11, 1950, in San Antonio, Texas, is an American actor whose career has spanned stage, film, and television for more than four decades. The son of Adriel "Squeaky" Rose McGill, an artist, and Woodrow Wilson McGill, a real estate and insurance agent, he grew up in San Antonio and attended Douglas MacArthur High School. He went on to earn a degree in drama from the University of Texas at Austin. McGill is related to former Texas State Senator A. R. Schwartz, and his mother was Jewish.

McGill's professional career began on Broadway, where he appeared between 1975 and 1983 in productions including The Cherry Orchard, Hamlet, and the musical My One And Only. These stage credits established his foundation as a trained performer before his work in film and television brought him wider recognition.

His breakthrough film role came in 1978 when he played Daniel Simpson "D-Day" Day in John Landis's National Lampoon's Animal House, a part he was eager to secure during a period when he was a young, unemployed actor in New York City. In the film, McGill performed the William Tell Overture by drumming his fingers on his windpipe, a skill he later reprised on television. He returned to the character in the short-lived 1979 ABC spinoff series Delta House. McGill subsequently became a recurring collaborator with director Michael Mann, appearing in The Insider in 1999, Ali in 2001, and Collateral in 2004. Among his other notable film roles is Sheriff Dean Farley in My Cousin Vinny. He portrayed CIA Director George Tenet in Oliver Stone's W. and Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton in Steven Spielberg's Lincoln in 2012.

McGill appeared in several HBO television films, playing Yankees manager Ralph Houk in Billy Crystal's 61* in 2001, diplomat George Ball in Path to War in 2002, journalist Peter Arnett in Live from Baghdad that same year, and Mac Stipanovich in the 2008 film Recount, which centered on the 2000 presidential election in Florida. On the series front, he was a recurring guest star on MacGyver from 1985 to 1992, playing Jack Dalton, the title character's friend and a soldier of fortune and bush pilot. In that role he again performed the finger-drumming windpipe trick, using it to lull a child to sleep. He portrayed Det. Vince Korsak, a veteran Boston homicide detective and mentor to the lead character, on the TNT drama Rizzoli & Isles from 2010 to 2016. McGill also voiced Lloyd Waterman, the owner of Waterman Cable, on The Cleveland Show from 2009 to 2013, and played an older Captain Braxton in a 1999 episode of Star Trek: Voyager. In 2021 he had a recurring role in the Netflix NASCAR comedy series The Crew.

Additional television appearances include guest roles on Quantum Leap, Walker Texas Ranger, CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, Miami Vice, and Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, as well as a role as Major Ed Ryan in the Babylon 5 episode "Severed Dreams," which won the 1997 Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation. McGill is also a skilled guitarist and played on set during season four of Rizzoli & Isles.