Craig Sheffer

Craig Eric Sheffer is an American actor born on April 23, 1960, in York, Pennsylvania, where his father worked as a prison guard. He began performing in school productions at York Suburban Senior High School, participating in regional and state drama competitions. Sheffer attended East Stroudsburg University of Pennsylvania on a sports scholarship, playing both baseball and football, before a knee injury cut short his athletic career. He left the university in 1980 to pursue acting professionally.

After relocating to New York City, Sheffer experienced a period of homelessness, sleeping beneath the marble staircase at Grand Central Terminal for several weeks and supporting himself by selling newspapers and eating at Unification Church dinners. He worked in commercials before making his first nationwide television appearance in 1982 as Ian Hayden on the ABC daytime soap opera One Life to Live. That same year, he appeared on Broadway in Torch Song Trilogy, stepping into the production midway through its run as a replacement for Paul Joynt. He returned to television in 1983 with a role on the short-lived primetime drama The Hamptons, and in 1984 took his first film role as the romantic lead opposite Pia Zadora in Voyage of the Rock Aliens.

Sheffer built a substantial film career through the mid-to-late 1980s, appearing as Emilio Estevez's best friend in That Was Then... This Is Now (1985), a reformatory camp inmate in Fire with Fire (1986), the antagonistic wealthy Hardy Jenns in Some Kind of Wonderful (1987), and the romantic lead in Baby Cakes (1989). In 1990, he took the title role of Aaron "Cabal" Boone in Clive Barker's horror film Nightbreed. His most prominent film role came in 1992, when Robert Redford cast him as author Norman Maclean in the Oscar-winning biographical drama A River Runs Through It. The following year he portrayed Heisman Trophy candidate quarterback Joe Kane in The Program (1993).

His subsequent film work included Fire in the Sky (1993), Sleep With Me (1994), Head Above Water (1996), the lead role in Bliss (1997) alongside Sheryl Lee, Terence Stamp, and Leigh Taylor-Young, and the starring role in Clive Barker's Hellraiser: Inferno. On television, he played Constant Bradley in the 1996 miniseries A Season in Purgatory. Sheffer also directed the dark comedy feature American Crude, starring Ron Livingston and Rob Schneider, which was released directly to DVD in June 2008, and made a cameo appearance in Stand Up Guys.

From 2003 to 2012, Sheffer was widely recognized for his role as Keith Scott on the CW Network series One Tree Hill, appearing as a series regular for three seasons before his character was killed off midway through season three, with additional guest appearances in season four. In 2016, he appeared alongside Steven Seagal in Code of Honor, and in 2021 he was cast as President Richard Nixon in the horror anthology series American Horror Story: Double Feature.

In his personal life, Sheffer was in a relationship with actress Gabrielle Anwar from 1989 until the early 1990s; the two have a daughter born in 1993. He serves as godfather to Anwar's children from her subsequent marriage, Hugo and Paisley Verea.