John Shea

John Victor Shea III (pronounced SHAY), born April 14, 1949, in North Conway, New Hampshire, is an American actor, director, producer, and screenwriter. His father, Dr. John Victor Shea, Jr., taught at Fryeburg Academy in Maine and later became an assistant superintendent of schools after serving in the U.S. Army during World War II, including combat at the Battle of the Bulge. His mother, Elizabeth Mary (née Fuller) Shea, introduced him to literature, poetry, classical music, and art, and encouraged him to study piano. The family settled in the Sixteen Acres area of Springfield, Massachusetts, where Shea was raised alongside four siblings.

Shea attended Roman Catholic schools in Springfield and graduated from Cathedral High School, where he captained the varsity debate team and competed in football and track. He went on to Bates College in Lewiston, Maine, earning a bachelor's degree in theatre in 1970, during which time he also participated in varsity debate and football and co-edited the college literary magazine, Puffed Wheat. He subsequently earned an M.F.A. in Directing from the Yale School of Drama in 1973 under Dean Robert Brustein. While at Yale, he performed at the Yale Repertory Theatre and in the Yale cabaret alongside classmates including Joe Grifasi and Meryl Streep, and studied filmmaking with Arthur Penn, Sidney Lumet, and George Roy Hill.

Following graduate school, Shea completed directing apprenticeships at the Chelsea Theatre under Robert Kalfin and at the Public Theater with Joseph Papp. His Broadway debut came at age 26 in Kalfin's production of Isaac B. Singer's Yentl, opposite Tovah Feldshuh. The production originated Off Broadway at the Chelsea Theatre Center at the Brooklyn Academy of Music before transferring to the Eugene O'Neill Theatre, produced by Actors Studio co-founder Cheryl Crawford. The show was later adapted into a film starring Barbra Streisand. For his performance, Shea received the Theatre World Award in 1976. After seeing him in the role, Lee Strasberg invited Shea to join the Actors Studio, where he spent several years studying method acting.

His Broadway work extended from 1975 to 1984 and included a role in Arthur Kopit's End of the World, alongside Linda Hunt and Barnard Hughes, as well as appearances in Romeo and Juliet, directed by Theodore Mann. During the same period, Shea was involved in numerous Off-Broadway productions, among them the original production of A. R. Gurney's The Dining Room, Peter Parnell's The Sorrows of Stephen, Stephen Poliakoff's American Days, Anne Meara's Down the Garden Paths, Eugene O'Neill's Long Day's Journey Into Night, Philip Barry's The Animal Kingdom opposite Sigourney Weaver, Paula Vogel's How I Learned to Drive with Molly Ringwald, Nancy Hasty's The Director, and Israel Horovitz's The Secret of Madame Bonnard's Bath.

Shea made his television film debut playing Joseph in the biblical epic The Nativity (1978), shot in Spain opposite Madeleine Stowe as Mary. His feature film debut followed in Matthew Chapman's English noir Hussy (1980), in which he was billed alongside Helen Mirren. His American film debut came with Constantin Costa-Gavras's Missing (1982), starring Jack Lemmon and Sissy Spacek, a film that won both the Academy Award and the Palme d'Or at the 1982 Cannes Film Festival. In 1983, he co-starred as Robert F. Kennedy in the NBC miniseries Kennedy, with Martin Sheen as John F. Kennedy and Blair Brown as Jacqueline Kennedy. The following year, he starred in Armyan Bernstein's Windy City (1984) alongside Kate Capshaw, a performance that earned him the Best Actor award at the Montreal World Film Festival.

In 1985, Shea made his Carnegie Hall debut playing the Soldier in Tom O'Horgan's production of Igor Stravinsky's L'Histoire du Soldat, with Pinchas Zukerman and Andre de Shields. The following year he made his London West End debut in Joseph Papp's production of Larry Kramer's The Normal Heart at the Albery Theatre. In 1987, he starred in the ABC miniseries Baby M, portraying William Stern. The performance earned him an Emmy Award for Supporting Drama Actor in 1988. Additional film credits include the comedy thriller Coast to Coast (1987), Small Sacrifices (1989) with Farrah Fawcett, The Insurgents (2006), Achchamundu! Achchamundu! (2009), An Invisible Sign (2010), and the Finnish production The Italian Key (2011).

In 1993, Shea was cast as Lex Luthor in the television series Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman, a role that became one of his most recognized. He appeared as a series regular in the first season before transitioning to recurring guest appearances in later seasons. He subsequently starred as Adam Kane in the 2000s series Mutant X, and later joined the cast of Gossip Girl, playing Harold Waldorf, the father of Blair Waldorf, a role he held for five years beginning in 2007.

On June 12, 1982, Shea co-hosted, with Kathryn Walker, an anti-nuclear rally in Central Park that became the largest peace rally in the history of the United States. The event was documented in the 1984 film In Our Hands, directed by Robert Richer and Stan Warnow, in which Shea made a cameo appearance. His political engagement drew recognition from organizations including Amnesty International. In 2014, Shea announced his directorial debut with the film Grey Lady, which was released in 2017.