John C. McGinley

John Christopher McGinley, born August 3, 1959, in the Greenwich Village neighborhood of New York City, is an American actor whose career spans Broadway, film, and television. One of five children, he is the son of a schoolteacher and a stockbroker, and his paternal great-grandfather emigrated from Donegal, Ireland. McGinley grew up in Short Hills, New Jersey, where he attended Millburn High School and played wide receiver on the football team. He pursued formal training in acting at Syracuse University before enrolling in New York University's Graduate Acting Program at the Tisch School of the Arts, from which he graduated in 1984.

Following his graduation, McGinley worked across multiple performance contexts, including off-Broadway and Broadway productions as well as a two-year run on the soap opera Another World. A casting scout took notice of him while he was serving as John Turturro's understudy in John Patrick Shanley's 1984 production of Danny and the Deep Blue Sea, which led directly to his audition for Oliver Stone's Platoon. He was cast as Sergeant Red O'Neill in that Oscar-winning 1986 film, a role that established his screen presence. His first film credit had come earlier that same year in Alan Alda's Sweet Liberty. Stone cast him again the following year in Wall Street, where he played Marv, and McGinley appeared in Talk Radio in 1988. He also co-wrote and co-starred in the 1990 film Suffering Bastards.

Throughout the 1990s McGinley maintained a steady film career, appearing in Point Break (1991), in which he played FBI agent Ben Harp; Highlander II: The Quickening (1991); Article 99 (1992); Wagons East (1994); Seven (1995); The Rock (1996), in which he played Captain Hendrix; Set It Off (1996); Nothing to Lose (1997); and Office Space (1999), where he portrayed the consultant Bob Slydell. In 1997 he received critical recognition for his portrayal of the serial killer Edgler Foreman Vess in the television miniseries adaptation of Dean Koontz's Intensity, which became Fox Television's highest-rated miniseries. He collaborated with Koontz and Fox again in Sole Survivor in 2000.

McGinley's most sustained television role began in 2001, when he joined the NBC series Scrubs as Dr. Perry Cox, an acerbic attending physician who serves as an unwilling mentor to the show's protagonist. He has noted that he improvised several recurring elements of the character, including his use of girls' names for J.D., his whistle, and his habit of touching his nose — the last of which he described as a tribute to Robert Redford's character in The Sting. In 2012, he joined USA Network's Burn Notice as Tom Card, Michael Westen's original CIA trainer, introduced in the sixth season. From 2016 to 2018, he starred in the IFC horror comedy series Stan Against Evil, playing a retired sheriff who reluctantly assists his replacement in combating demons that have overtaken their small town. TBS ordered his series Ground Floor, which ran for two seasons before being canceled in 2015.

McGinley's Broadway career extended from 1985 to 2012 and included productions of Glengarry Glen Ross and Requiem for a Heavyweight. He appeared in the 2013 Broadway revival of Glengarry Glen Ross as Dave Moss.

Beyond acting, McGinley wrote the 2005 book Untalkative Bunny: How to be Heard Without Saying a Word, featuring the title character from the television series of the same name. He has performed voice-over work on animated series including Justice League Unlimited, The Boondocks, and WordGirl, and voiced Metallo in the 2009 animated film Superman/Batman: Public Enemies. He narrated the documentary of the Detroit Red Wings' 2008 Stanley Cup Championship and began narrating commercials for ESPN.com in 2009. Since the 2007 NFL season he has appeared in Miller Lite's More Taste League commercials as the "Commish." In 2008, he was named an Honorary Patron of the University Philosophical Society at Trinity College, Dublin.

McGinley married Lauren Lambert in February 1997. Their son, Max, who has Down syndrome, was born that year, and the couple divorced in December 2001. In April 2007, McGinley married yoga instructor Nichole Kessler, whom he had been engaged to since August 2006; they have two daughters together. McGinley serves on the board of the Global Down Syndrome Foundation, based in Denver, and is a celebrity Ambassador for the National Down Syndrome Society. He is also a Global Ambassador for Special Olympics and was involved in developing its "Spread the Word, To End the Word" campaign. McGinley maintains a home in Malibu, California, and holds a stake in one of Billy Gilroy's SoHo bistros in New York alongside actor Willem Dafoe.