David Selby

David Lynn Selby, born February 5, 1941, in Morgantown, West Virginia, is an American actor and writer whose career has spanned film, television, and stage. The son of carpenter Clyde Ira Selby and his wife Sarah E. (née McIntyre), Selby grew up in Morgantown and attended West Virginia University. During his time there, he joined the cast of Honey in the Rock, a Civil War drama performed at Grandview State Park. He has consistently identified theatre as his preferred medium, and his stage work eventually brought him to Broadway, where he appeared in productions between 1967 and 1981, including I Won't Dance, The Eccentricities of a Nightingale, The Heiress, Gandhi, and The Impossible Years.

Before his Broadway tenure was fully established, Selby participated in a national tour of The Impossible Years. His casting in the daytime television series Dark Shadows in 1968 came about after a talent agent observed him performing in a production of Summer and Smoke. He joined the series initially as the ghost of Quentin Collins and later as Quentin Collins the werewolf, a role he continued until the show's cancellation in 1971. The part made Selby a recognizable figure among younger audiences, with his image appearing on the covers of magazines including 16. Following the series' end, he appeared in Night of Dark Shadows, the second feature film derived from the show, released in 1971. Beginning in 2004, he reprised the role for a series of Dark Shadows audio dramas produced by Big Finish Productions, and in 2012 he made a cameo in the theatrical film adaptation of Dark Shadows, one of four original cast members to appear in the production.

Throughout the 1970s, Selby maintained an active presence in film and television. In 1972 he co-starred with Barbra Streisand in Up the Sandbox, and his subsequent credits included the films U-Turn (1973), The Super Cops (1974), and Rich Kids (1979), as well as episodes of The Waltons, Police Woman, and Kojak. He was part of the cast of Washington: Behind Closed Doors, the Emmy Award-winning miniseries that aired in 1977. His 1980 film Raise the Titanic earned him a Golden Raspberry Award nomination for Worst Supporting Actor at the inaugural ceremony for that award.

In 1981, Selby took on the role of the villainous Michael Tyrone in the final season of the prime-time serial Flamingo Road. After that series concluded in 1982, he joined Falcon Crest as Richard Channing, the illegitimate son of Jacqueline Perrault, played by Lana Turner, and the son of Douglas Channing, husband of Angela Channing, played by Jane Wyman. The character began as an antagonist but evolved into a protagonist over the course of the series, becoming its central figure in the final season. Selby appeared in 209 episodes of Falcon Crest across its run from 1982 to 1990.

Selby's career continued into subsequent decades with film roles including Dying Young (1991), White Squall (1996), and Surviving Christmas (2004), and television appearances in series such as Cold Case in 2007 and Mad Men in 2009. In 2017 he had a recurring role in the drama Legion. In 2009, to mark the 200th anniversary of Abraham Lincoln's birthday, Selby appeared onstage with President Barack Obama and portrayed Lincoln in a scene from The Heavens Are Hung in Black at the reopening of Ford's Theatre. He had previously portrayed Lincoln in a 1998 episode of Touched by an Angel titled "Beautiful Dreamer." That same year, 2012, he provided the voice of Commissioner James Gordon in Batman: The Dark Knight Returns, a two-part direct-to-video animated adaptation of the 1986 graphic novel.

In addition to his acting work, Selby is a published writer. His plays include Lincoln and James and Final Assault, and his poetry collections are titled My Mother's Autumn and Happenstance. He has written two novels, Lincoln's Better Angel and The Blue Door, as well as A Better Place, which combines memoir and social commentary about his upbringing. In 2010 he published My Shadowed Past, a chronicle of his experience working on Dark Shadows.