John Towey

John Madden Towey, born February 13, 1940, in Rochester, Minnesota, is an American actor with a Broadway career spanning from 1970 to 1999. He is the son of Helen Madden and Robert F. Towey, an undertaker who operated a funeral business with his brother Richard L. Towey. The family's involvement in the funeral industry traced back to Towey's paternal grandfather, John H. Towey, who founded the business in Stewartville, Minnesota in the early twentieth century.

Before pursuing a career in acting, Towey attended Saint John's University in Collegeville, Minnesota, and served in the United States Army during the Vietnam War, during which he was stationed in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Following his military service, he relocated to Chicago to study at the Goodman School of Drama at the Art Institute of Chicago, an institution now affiliated with DePaul University. He earned a B.F.A. in directing from the Goodman Theatre in 1967.

Towey built his stage career across several prominent regional theater institutions. He performed two seasons at the Arena Stage in Washington, D.C., in 1977–78 and again in 1981. At the Guthrie Theatre in Minneapolis from 1984 to 1986, he appeared in ten productions, including Three Sisters, Twelfth Night, A Christmas Carol, Great Expectations, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Cyrano, Execution of Justice, On the Razzle, Candida, and The Rainmaker. He subsequently spent two seasons at The Public Theater in New York from 1987 to 1989, where his credits at the New York Shakespeare Festival included Julius Caesar, Talk Radio, Romeo and Juliet, Coriolanus, The Winter's Tale, and Cymbeline.

His Broadway credits include Paris Is Out! and Amadeus, in which he played Giuseppi Bonno in the 1999–2000 production directed by Sir Peter Hall. His off-Broadway work encompassed productions including To Be Young, Gifted, and Black (1969), Arf and the Great Airplane Snatch (1969), A Dream Out of Time (1970), Fashion (1974), God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater (1979), My Heart is in the East (1983).

Towey's television work spans more than three decades, beginning with Hidden Faces in 1969 and You Are There in 1970. His later television appearances include episodes of L.A. Law, The X-Files, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, ER, Picket Fences, Murder One, Party of Five, Cracker, General Hospital, The Practice, Crossing Jordan, and American Dreams, among many others. His film credits include Another Woman (1988), The Invisible Kid (1988), Fearless (1993), and Cries of Silence (1996).

A classically trained pianist, Towey has performed more than 100 programs since 2001 in schools within the Los Angeles Unified School District through a classical music introduction program called Piano Masters. He also performs piano concerts at retirement homes throughout Southern California.