Jack Coleman

Jack Coleman is an American actor born on February 21, 1958, in Easton, Pennsylvania, in the Lehigh Valley region of eastern Pennsylvania. A sixth-generation descendant of Benjamin Franklin, he attended Solebury School in Solesbury Township, Pennsylvania, before enrolling at Duke University, where he committed to pursuing acting as a profession. Following his graduation from Duke in 1980, he trained at the Eugene O'Neill Theater Center in Waterford, Connecticut.

Coleman's professional career began in daytime television, with a role on Days of Our Lives from 1981 to 1982, where he played Jake Kositchek, also known as the Salem Strangler. In 1982, he joined the primetime soap opera Dynasty, taking over the role of Steven Carrington — one of the first openly gay characters in American television — a transition the show explained through the character's altered appearance following an oil rig accident. Coleman held the role through the series' eighth season in 1988.

In 1990, Coleman made his Broadway debut in Stand-Up Tragedy. His stage work also earned him recognition in Los Angeles, where he received a nomination for his performance in Stand-Up Tragedy at the Mark Taper Forum and won a Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle Award for his work in Bouncers.

Coleman went on to appear in the short-lived television series Nightmare Cafe in 1992 and the miniseries Kingdom Hospital in 2004, along with guest roles on shows including CSI: Miami, Nip/Tuck, Without a Trace, Diagnosis: Murder, and Entourage. He co-starred in the Disney Channel film Cow Belles alongside Alyson and Amanda Michalka, playing the father of their characters. He also wrote the screenplays for Studio City, which he produced and acted in, and Can't Help Falling.

Beginning in 2006, Coleman became widely recognized for his role as Noah Bennet in the science-fiction series Heroes, a part he described as a blend of light and dark qualities. He remained a main cast member through 2010 and reprised the role in 2015 for Heroes Reborn, a continuation of the original series. During the same period, he took on a recurring role on The Office starting in November 2010, playing Pennsylvania State Senator Robert Lipton, a character whose romantic entanglements with both Angela Martin and Oscar Martinez drove multiple storylines across several episodes through 2013.

Coleman joined the cast of Castle in 2012 as US Senator William Bracken, an antagonist to Stana Katic's character Kate Beckett, appearing in multiple episodes through 2015. He also played Bill Forbes in the third season of The Vampire Diaries from 2011 to 2012, and portrayed the closeted gay husband of a conservative vice president on Scandal in 2013. Additional television credits include a recurring role in the seventh and final season of Burn Notice as CIA officer Andrew Strong, and an appearance in a 2014 episode of CSI: Crime Scene Investigation. In 2019, he starred in the film adaptation of Graham Farrow's stage play Rattlesnakes.

Coleman married actress Beth Toussaint in 1996. The couple have a daughter, Tess, born in 1999.